


And I the elder and more terrible

by lilith_morgana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 04:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2533478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so low?<br/>Tywin Lannister genfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A really old (well, from 2011) fic from an old LJ-ASoIAF tournament thing where this was written to bring house Lannister pride and glory. Or something like that. 
> 
> Most details are just made up and won't fit the recent additions to canon.

  
**And I the elder and more terrible  
**  
*  
 __  
Danger knows full well  
That Caesar is more dangerous than he.  
We are two lions litter'd in one day,  
And I the elder and more terrible.

**Julius Caesar - Shakespeare**

\------------------  


**PART ONE**

 

**I.**

He's a boy, restless and watchful and on the edge of his seat in the Stone Garden where both Septa Maria and Maester Daron like to hold their lessons in summer. Out here, Tywin knows, the noise from the bedchambers in the castle is muffled against the splash of flowers and rocks, its meaning lost in ancient patterns of the ancestral glory laid out beneath their feet. 

“Which battle does this carving tell us of?” their maester asks, pointing at a once-magnificent depiction of deeds long gone and forgotten. But even now, their story covered in moss and spiders, Tywin can discern the shapes of Lannister soldiers riding with the crimson and gold banners in their hands. 

“Is it true that Mother will die today?” Genna interrupts in a tone that betrays nothing, unless you hear that slight shiver around the last word. She appears brave but more than once Tywin has found her outside the bedchamber where they have not been allowed since Mother fell ill; he has heard her weep in the late evenings and one night he had to carry her back to her own bed when she slept curled up in the corridor outside the closed door. She had woken up then, looked at him with strangely empty eyes before she had buried her face in the crook of his neck; he meant to admonish her for being silly and for not staying in her room, but instead he had just held her for a long time, stroking her hair. They have never spoken of it. 

Maester Daron looks at Genna squarely for a moment, before responding. “Now, the matters of life and death are not something men rule over. Only the gods know what will happen to your lady mother.”

Tygett fidgets with the tin soldiers in front of him on the stone table; he is not looking up. “Father says she will be well again.” 

Father says a lot of things these days, especially when he is drunk. Tywin sometimes hears him rummage around long after midnight when both of them ought to be asleep; he never walks downstairs to see what the noise originates from, doesn't want to know. _The man is mad with grief_ , some of the maids whisper and when they eat with Father, he tries to look closely at him, to see if he looks mad. It's difficult to tell, he thinks, he looks like he has always looked, but paler and with sad eyes. 

“Not even the Lord of Casterly Rock can command the seven, I'm afraid.” 

Tywin wonders for how long their maester is going to let them discuss Mother. He does not want to; he stares at the carvings instead, follows the lines with his gaze and wills them stronger, firmer, _clearer_. 

“It tells the story of the Battle on the Field of Fire,” he says, in a loud voice. Everyone looks at him, even Tygett looks up from his positioning of the soldiers around the edge of the table. “The carving, I mean.”

“Ah, yes.” Maester Daron nods after a moment of silence, seemingly surprised to return to the lesson so abruptly. “Indeed it does. What can you tell me of the Battle of Fire?”

*

Mother dies the following night.

 _It's a strange thing, dying from a fever in the middle of summer,_ one maid whispers to another as they scurry along in the corridor outside, probably thinking they cannot be overheard. Tywin looks at them over his shoulder and hears everything. 

Father has gathered them all in her room, even Gerion who can barely walk. And so they stand around the bed where she lies, her eyes closed and her face much more at peace than Tywin can remember it having been ever before. Mother had never laughed, at least not as far as he knows. Once, when he was much younger and it snowed for so long he forgot what flowers looked like, he had caught her crying in the Hall of Heroes, had seen her standing by the window and clutching the frosty glass with her fingers as though she had wished to jump out of it. _You know I can't stand the winters in this place,_ she had said to his father that same evening. _Imprisoned up here, far from the world._ Tywin can't recall what his father had replied but her words return to him now, as he watches her and Father, stooped over her shape in the bed, his back bent, hands clutching the sheets that cover her arms. 

Everything seems to hang on a thread in here, he thinks, everything seems to shift and alter around them. Tywin feels Tygett's body warm and close, pressed up against his side and when he looks down, his youngest brother reaches up for him, arms outstretched. 

“We must be strong now,” Tywin hears his father say, with his back turned to them. On the floor, Gerion has begun to grumble so Tywin picks him up. 

“We must be strong,” Father says again, wringing his hands like an old man. Then he starts crying and Tywin looks away, looks down at Gerion who is heavy like rocks in his arms, squirming and sobbing, too. Tywin has no idea what Mother used to do to make him stop. He feels a red-hot wave of anger rushing towards his own helplessness, his father's bowed head and useless hands, his crying brother who isn't showing the slightest sign of being consoled, even when Genna pats him gently on his arm. Tywin is eight years old and he doesn't know what comes next because nobody he knows has died before and he has no concept of what is proper in these situations and he wishes Father would _do_ something because someone has to. 

“Father,” Kevan tries in a small voice. “Father, Gerion is crying.”

There is no response. 

_“Father?_ ” Kevan says again, louder now.

With a devastated expression on her round face and her eyes full of tears, Genna looks at Tywin before letting her gaze fall on their father before them and Tywin understands - for the first time and with overwhelming force - that they are alone. 

“Come,” he says, trying to keep his voice commanding enough for all of them to do as he says, willing it to rise above them. “Let's go find Septa Maria.”

*

A slight breeze ruffles the curtains in their shared bedchamber and a scent of the ocean slips in – fresh, salty air, washing away all remains of humid heat. Tywin thinks about his mother's words again. _Far from the world._ He has always thought of Casterly Rock as the world itself, the most important fortress in the Seven Kingdoms, home of King Loren and Lann the Clever and he can't understand why anyone would want to live elsewhere. He wonders if she had wanted to. If it had been Father's fault or theirs. Among his shadowy recollections of her, he remembers that she cried with Gerion in her belly, too, a hand covering her face so that Tywin and Kevan would not see her tears. Kevan had tried to touch her and she had pushed him away. _Go outside, get out of here._ He remembers, too, soft hands that smelled of roses stroking his forehead, once when he was ill and Mother sat by his bedside. _Who is my big, brave lion?_ But he cannot see her face in his memories, cannot make out her features in the grey that surrounds her; she is already fading and he pushes her further away.

“Tywin?” Kevan's voice is muffled by the blanket and stretched thin by the distance between their beds. “Do you think Father will send us away?” 

The thought has occurred to him as well – it's not uncommon for motherless children to be sent away at an early age as squires, even Genna could be sent somewhere for education before she gets wed, he supposes. 

“No,” he answers, all the same, shifting position in his bed. His hands and feet are cold despite the season, a chill seeping inside. 

“Good.” Kevan sounds reassured. 

Casterly Rock is his home, Tywin thinks, it's their _home._ He pulls the blanket up over his shoulders, wrapping it tight around himself to shut out everything else, to forget that Father is the Lord of Casterly Rock and that he is just a boy.

 

ii. 

“My son is just a boy, Lord Frey.” Father's voice echoes in the feast hall, shattering against the walls and clashing with Lady Tarbeck's high-pitched laughter. “You will have to excuse him.”

But Tywin doesn't sit down. He still stands, hands clenched, staring at his father who cannot conceal his discomfort any better than he can cover up his sweaty, drunken face. This evening it has been plain for all to see that he is pressured into this, that he is cornered like a wolf surrounded by a pack of mountain lions and the roles are _wrong_ , Tywin thinks with almost desperate anger, the lions ought to be more powerful than the wretched lord of the Twins. There is no logic in this, it makes no sense that Father has given in, all but _kneeling_ in front of this lesser lord. Even the vassals muttered in protest before, just as Lord Reyne had stormed out of the hall. Swallowing, Tywin straightens his back further. 

“Your son's opinion hardly concerns me, my lord. Last I heard you were still the head of the family.” Lord Frey says, sounding almost bored but Tywin can see how pleased he is behind his act. He has every reason to be. His son is going to marry into the wealth and power of Casterly Rock for no more reason than Father's lack of pride, because of a drunkard's inability to govern his own realm. There's a burning, _aching_ catch in his breath as he tries to steady it; it gives him no pleasure seeing Father ridiculed, merely a dark discomfort, yet he can't remain silent and the impossibility of it all feels almost too _much_. 

"Well, that is a matter of some dispute," Lady Tarbeck cuts in, sending Father a wide grin. "Forgive me, my lord, I am merely jesting."

“Emmund Frey is not even the heir.” Tywin looks at his father again. _Why do you let them laugh at us?_ “You should make a better match for a bride of Casterly Rock.”

“Oh, but the boy is _bold,_ ” the Lord of Kayce whispers too loudly to his wife who giggles discreetly. 

“Tywin,” Father retorts, voice sharper now, finally carrying some weight. “I believe that is enough from you! Have a seat or leave the hall.”

Realising his words have no impact in this room, Tywin sits down, still keeping his gaze firm and focused on the men in front of him. Beside him, Lady Broom looks about to say something, but remains silent. From across the table, Genna looks at him with an unreadable expression on her face, her eyes wide and somewhat hazed, as though she's been drinking from Father's wine goblet. 

He swallows again, waiting for the murmur of voices to increase, to drown his presence here. 

But of course his protests hang in the very air for the rest of the evening, drawing gazes and mumbled conversations to where he is sitting. He's pretending not to hear, trying to eat the food on his plate even if the bites seem to grow in his mouth, tasting of anger burnt down to ashes. 

“You are quite the little lion, are you not?” Lady Tarbeck leans over the table, patting Tywin's arm. He stifles a grimace before he stiffly pulls away, intent on not giving her any further reason to laugh at him. _A lord's face is always calm_ someone - not Father - says in his memory. “But little boys do not know as much about life as they imagine. Or what say you, my dear Lord Tytos?”

“Yes,” Father smiles heartily; he doesn't meet Tywin's gaze. “Quite so.”

Lady Tarbeck laughs again, tilting her head back and baring her teeth. 

Then Tywin leaves, without asking permission, without saying another word. The sound of his feet against the tiled marble beneath him rings in his ears as he walks through the gilded halls; the soaring noise that follows his exit twists into a hard knot in his stomach as he quickens his step. 

Later, when he can hear music echoing through the stone walls and see torches and fires light up the dark of night, Tywin sits on a balcony facing the sea. Right beneath the spot where he's sitting, on the grass and rocks, they used to play all of their childhood games. He learned to swim down there, learned to fight with sticks and later with wooden swords; he gave Kevan a nosebleed the first time they practised – and Genna had stood on a tree stump, watching. Some years later as Kevan started to fight back he had pushed Tywin down into the water, injured his leg, cornered him with att the wounded pride of a little brother. Genna had watched that, too, cheering for both of them even if Tywin had always suspected she secretly enjoyed seeing Kevan beat him. It is the code of honour for younger siblings, he had learned. 

Now Genna stands on the balcony, stepping out of a shadow, quiet as a mouse. It's strange how his chubby, clumsy, talkative _storm_ of a sister can be so quiet when she wants to; she has always been the best at hide-and-seek. Tywin turns his head to look at her. 

“Did you sneak out from the feast?” 

Genna nods proudly. “It's past my bedtime.” 

Tywin thinks it's quite possibly past his own bedtime, as well, but usually nobody bothers him about it. He may still be no more than a boy, but all the servants treat him with respect and more than once since Mother died, the maids have overlooked his late-night adventures in the castle. One of them - a comely-looking woman with bushy dark hair and rough hands - always grins when she catches him, saying _my lips are sealed, little lord._ He rather likes her. 

“I stole an apple.” His sister walks closer, holding out her palm to show him a baked, sugar-coated apple that looks soggy and wet and not particularly edible. “Here. You can have it.”

He doesn't want her offering but her face is so honest, her expression so triumphant and he thinks about how Father will send her to the Freys within a year, dress her up and give her away as a bribe to a lord the master of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West should have no need to flatter. With a nod, he takes the apple and places it on the bench beside him. 

After having wiped her hands on her dress - her _new_ dress, Tywin remembers Septa Maria had told her sternly before the feast - Genna sits down, too. They are silent together for a while. 

“It was nice of you,” she says eventually. 

_I was not being nice_ , he thinks. _I was angry._ He is still angry, _always_ angry as of late. Things have changed since Mother died, _they_ have changed and the castle has changed and he can hear it everywhere: the talk of Father's follies, of the liege lords who dare to protest openly, who question Father's orders because he gives them without power. The castle is rife with muted mockery. It seems at times as though the rock itself whispers of how Lord Tytos's whoring is draining the treasury once and for all, of how Lord Tarbeck is borrowing money indefinitely, of how the colours of all the paintings in the Hall of Heroes are fading away because the times for heroes are long past them and all that remains is a house full of cowards and drunkards. He speaks louder and louder, hoping to be heard above it but sometimes all he hears is the waves hitting the rocks below them, singing the song of nothing at all. 

“It did not matter,” he says, sighing. 

“I thought you were really _brave_.” 

He doesn't know what to say in response to that, so he kicks away a small pebble with his toe. “Lady Tarbeck is an old hag,” he mutters. “She ought to bend the knee for Father.”

“They will bend the knee for you,” Genna says and her voice is full of admiration, but it's not enough to soften him, not tonight. 

_If they don't bow, I will bring them to their knees,_ he thinks solemnly, swearing an oath to himself with the images of the feast hall appearing behind his eyes. 

His sister looks thoughtful, scraping her feet on the mossy tiles under them. Then she glances at him. “They are laughing at Father, not at _you_.”

Tywin purses his lips, pressing his teeth together with such a force that his head hurts. “It's the same thing.”

*

“He is just a boy,” Father says again, his voice harder this time. “You know what he is like, my dear.”

They stand in the corridor outside the chambers that now seems to belong to Father's mistress – she's clutching a necklace in her hand and Tywin stares at it, as though it holds power over him like a _curse_. It's Mother's necklace, he knows. The heirloom she wore even in the sept as they stood vigil for her and Tywin had stooped over the brier, had watched her and tried to remember what she was like before it would be too late. Now, all that he recalls is the string of glittering red stones in their golden chain; this is the extent of his mother's impact on his memory: a necklace and the scent of roses. 

“She has stolen Mother's necklace.” He hears how the fury in his own voice is sharpening it, morphing it into a blade. 

“You can hear for yourself what it is he accuses me of, Tytos-”

“You ought to call him _my lord_ ,” Tywin snaps, taking a step forward before Father suddenly stands between them, eyes flashing with that harsh edge of disapproval that seems to be branded into his features lately. At least when he is speaking to Tywin. When he was a very small boy, not much older than Gerion, Tywin had fallen from a tree, and broken something in his hand. He had been climbing one moment and then the next he was on the ground, crying and screaming and his father had ran to him then, had scooped him up in his strong arms and carried him inside; then he had kept talking to keep Tywin distracted while Maester Daron had examined his hand and bandaged it. _Let us sing of the brave King Loren; no don't look down, look at me._ It's the only time that Tywin can remember Father having been anything but _disappointed_ in his presence. 

“ _Tywin._ Be quiet.” He turns to his mistress. “Let me see this wretched necklace.”

Father's whore is a candlemaker's daughter; she's _nobody_ and Father cannot make a wife out of someone who is nothing at all so he keeps her here among them, lets her stay like an honoured guest. She dines with them in the evenings; her voice is grating and ridiculous and her stories long and tedious. The only reason Gerion finds them funny is because he's too young to know better. 

There's a glint of familiarity in Father's gaze as he studies the necklace and for a heartbeat Tywin thinks he will nod and say _he's right._ But then the usual veil settles in his eyes, the shadows in him where he hides. He looks at his mistress and something passes between them. 

“I bought this for her, Tywin,” comes Father's verdict, after a pause. “Now you ought to apologise for your behaviour. Theft is a serious crime to accuse someone of.” 

“Yes.” 

“It is quite all right, Tytos.” Father's mistress smiles at them both, the triumph spelled out in her face. “Now that we have settled this matter.”

_My lord,_ Tywin thinks, swallowing his anger. _You ought to call him my lord. You're nothing, nothing, nothing._

“My apologies,” he says instead and forces himself to meet the woman's eyes. 

She smiles affectedly, leaning forward to touch his shoulder in a gesture of forced understanding. She's old, he thinks when she comes closer. She's old and ugly and fat. He wonders if his father finds her as beautiful as Mother. Tywin can smell an abundance of scented oils on her skin and even as she leaves, arm in arm with Father, a trace of her scent remains.

*

The long autumn of his thirteenth year, Tywin spends almost solely at his father's side, being educated in the matters of ruling over Casterly Rock.

They sit together in Father's office where the large windows are facing the water and the walls are proudly displaying ancestors and their deeds and Tywin wills himself to listen without interruptions. _Listen_ , while Father speaks of the legal niceties of taxes and laws of the Westerlands, the patronage and power of the court, the concerns of smallfolk and lords – it feels like he's a boy again and listens to Maester Daron, except Maester Daron would offer him more praise for answering his questions correctly. Father barely notices behind his humming and nodding and the scraping sound of ink on paper, his long lectures on the simplest of matters. 

Tywin already knows the texts and facts and what he wants, what he _craves_ , is to be shown how it all comes together in reality, but his father is not a man of action and so Tywin's restlessness grows as the days pass. One morning, he watches Father decline a suggestion from their Captain of the Fleet to have three new ships built. When Tywin asks why, his father merely sighs. 

“We cannot afford expensive rearmament in times of peace,” he says. 

It seems to Tywin as times of peace would serve as the best opportunities for just that, but he also knows that their fortune is slipping out of his father's hands, one mistake at the time. He doesn't like to talk about it, but the rest of the castle do. 

“Then we will have to increase our taxes, won't we?” Tywin picks up a dry quill and spins it between his fingers. Father gives him an irritated glare. 

“No,” he says, curtly. 

“Why?”

Father is silent for a moment, finishing a paragraph of his reply to the Captain of the Fleet. “Because we will not stir our bannermen and trouble our lords merely because the fleet desires new ships.” 

At times Tywin wonders, not without bitterness, how much better Casterly Rock would fare if only Father showed a fraction of the same spirit in his governing of it as he does arguing about it with his heir. There's a flare of something in his gaze as Tywin lashes out; when he is provoked, his father can still roar like a lion even if he is an old, toothless one to the rest of the world. Inside this room this autumn, Tywin has spotted glimpses of a man he vaguely remembers, but speaking to _him_ is a bit like reaching for something at the horizon. 

“There is greatness in being a Warden, too, Tywin.” Father suddenly looks very tired, as though he has worn himself out by writing a simple letter. “In protecting and guarding one's land.” 

“But if there is nothing left to ward?” he asks, staring at the letter that denies their fleet to expand. They are speaking of separate matters: his father wants to smooth over holes and fractions, repairing what has been broken; Tywin wants to tear down all the castles conjured out of thin air and begin anew, building on the immovable rocks beneath them. 

“There _is._ ” 

And for once there's such conviction in his father's voice that Tywin refrains from making another comment.

*

Later that year, Father takes Lord Tarbeck hostage for breaking his word and when Tywin demands to know which vow he had forsworn, he is met with silence.

“It hardly matters,” his father says, which usually means his motivation comes from his whore. Tywin doesn't ask any more about it since he learned a long time ago it is as meaningless as trying to make him listen to Tywin's ideas and suggestions. “What matters is that his lady wife has taken three Lannisters hostage in return.”

“Three?” Tywin frowns.

“She has overstepped her boundaries,” Kevan cuts in. 

They stand in Father's office, a jumbled Lannister war council trying to make sense of a situation that seems to be missing several pieces of information. 

Father scratches his head, walking up to the desk in the room, where the message left by the rider remains among other letters and maps. “It need not come to bloodshed, at least. She proposes an exchange.”

“Surely you are not agreeing to it?” Tywin's voice is loud and sharp, the frustration rendering it harder, more frantic. He takes a deep breath. In the corner of his eye he can spot his lord uncle and his family, pale and solemn all of them. “She is _insulting_ you with this proposal.”

Taking Lord Tarbeck hostage in the first place is madness, Tywin thinks with increasing anger. A criminal among the vassals ought to hang or be sent to the Wall, not be traded for three overlords in a shady proposal built on an overwhelming lack of respect. But his father shies away from outright punishments, claiming them to be _overly harsh._

“What would you have us do, then?” It's uncle Tyrion who speaks. He steps forward to stand beside his brother. They bear such semblance to one another, Tywin thinks, two pieces cut out from the same fabric. Old, tired lions surrendering their Rock not to the dragons, but to disrespectful vassals. 

“I would return Lady Tarbeck's precious husband in three pieces,” he says.

“And start an open conflict with House Tarbeck?” 

“We have no reason to fear them on the battlefield.” Tywin looks at his father, wishing he could force him to listen to the heir to Casterly Rock, the one who soon will be leading their armies and exacting their justice. But he is just a boy, and there's such _disapproval_ behind the words, every time he hears Father pronounce them in his head.

“It would put us at too much of a risk-”

“One can only risk something if one has something to lose.” Tywin's words seem to swell in his mouth, their size enormous. He may be a boy, but he knows that he is right. He knows that wars are won with steel, not compromises. He knows that Lady Tarbeck is a proud old hag who doesn't suffer slights to her honour; he knows, too, that people are treated the way they allow themselves to be treated and that if you want others to respect and fear you, you have to give them a reason. “What do you have left to lose? Our vassals mock us, the treasury is empty-”

“Enough!” Father slams his hand down on the desk with such force that the ink bottle falls and splotches all over the old parchments and maps, rendering them useless. For a brief moment as their eyes meet, Tywin thinks his father is going to hit him; strangely, he almost wishes he would. “You speak like an arrogant pup of great and terrible matters that you do not understand! Your cousin Stafford sits in one of her cells. Is his life worth so little to you that you are willing to risk it for our pride's sake? Is he nothing worth losing?”

“I think what Tywin means-” Kevan begins, but he is cut off. 

“You are mere boys, playing at war.” Father walks past them, his expression calmer now as he puts on his lord's face to go and officially deal with the situation. “You have too much pride and too little sense.”

“I agree with them,” their cousin Joanna says suddenly, crossing the floor with a defiant expression on her face. Tywin blinks. “It is not my place to be interfering, my lord, but it seems preposterous that we should let Lady Tarbeck dictate our next move.” 

“Joanna, dearest girl.” Uncle Tyrion sounds as tired as Father looks. “ _Please._ ”

She makes a non-committal gesture with her hand that seems to state that she's obeying – for the moment being.

“I will send a message to Lady Tarbeck, to inform her that I accept the exchange of prisoners,” Father says, seemingly without having heard her at all. Tywin bites back another remark. 

As Father walks out of the room, Joanna catches Tywin's gaze and he can almost feel her thoughts in his body, their shared anger a thread between them.

*

“Thank you, Tywin,” Joanna says to him, several days later when the prisoners are returned and Father can pretend he has successfully averted a conflict. “For standing up for us.”

“You stood up for yourself, as far as I recall.” He still hasn't forgotten the way she had looked then, striding forward to protest against Father's decision, disregarding form and practice. She had been _magnificent_ \- smooth and fierce like a lioness. “Very well at that.”

She smiles, a quick and distant sort of smile. Joanna is one year his senior and almost a woman grown, by all accounts. And much like him, she is being sent away. He knows she is to be summoned to court in hopes of increasing her chances of making a good match for herself – unlike his own Father, hers seems intent on strengthening his family's power through marriage. Or perhaps, Tywin thinks, uncle Tyrion merely wants to mind his business undisturbed by his intelligent, unafraid daughter. 

“How do you think you will like King's Landing?” he asks, to have something to say. 

“It's certainly going to be more exciting than remaining at home,” she says pleasantly. “Mother was at court before she married Father, so she has educated me thoroughly. Father is mostly worried I will embarrass him, I suspect.”

“I don't think you will.” Tywin looks at her. It's difficult to imagine that anything about her could be embarrassing. 

“Father says I must 'heed the wisdom of my elders'.” She speaks in a mocking drawl, imitating Uncle Tyrion's voice to perfection. 

Tywin can't hold back a smile. 

“I am being sent to Dragonstone in a fortnight.” 

“Ah, yes. Father mentioned that.” There's that quick smile again, lighting up her face. “I hope you can come visit us at King's Landing soon.”

 

 

iii. 

The Castle at the mouth of Blackwater Bay is as strange and oddly magnificent as the legends state and Tywin who has rode the last stretch of the journey dismounts without taking his eyes off the towers that reach up from the mountain. It's not much larger than Casterly Rock and not as outwardly beautiful to his mind, but this dragon castle is an impressive, beckoning shape against the sky nonetheless. It is fitted for the Prince, he knows. The heir apparent. But it's said that Prince Duncan will give up his crown for a common woman; Tygett has spoken of Prince Duncan with admiration and wonder ever since he unhorsed his first knight in a tournament at the age of ten and he speaks of these rumours too, when given a chance. _He is the boldest of all the Targaryens. And chivalrous too!_

“Welcome to Dragonstone, my lord.” The guards greet him as he walks past them. 

Tywin has been told that Aerys, the only grandson of King Aegon, needs the company of boys his own age; he has been informed that the boy is _a true Targaryen for good or ill_ and he keeps his eyes open for the him to show up when they walk inside the corridors. But the only faces he sees are those belonging to servants and guards.

It's a peculiar place on the inside, as well. He looks up at the carvings along every wall: dragons, everywhere. He wonders if they serve as proud memories or warnings, if the history they are taught by their maesters differs from the one Maester Daron taught them in the Stone Garden. Stories where soldiers, lands and resources burnt to ashes under Aegon's dragons, and many years passed before the land could be ruled by anyone. He wonders what Aerys Targaryen feels when he drags his fingers over the lines of his family's history, if he can perceive that pulsating, low current in his blood, _demanding_ things from him. Sometimes when Tywin stands in the Hall of Heroes or looks at the paintings in the Golden Gallery, he imagines he can feel the castle in his own body - mirroring the way the sound of sea is captured within the walls - the duties and boundaries of it falling down over his shoulders. 

He has to wait until supper that evening to meet Aerys who already sits at the table when Tywin enters what he has been told is the smallest dining hall in the whole of Stone Keep, having been held up by the embarrassing difficulties of navigate corridors that follow no familiar pattern. 

The moment Tywin enters the room, the boy at the table looks up, smiling brightly. “You got lost, did you not? Everyone does at first. The last lord who squired here is said to have been lost for most of his first day. I will show you around after supper!”

Later that evening, after the grand tour of the castle, Aerys asks Tywin to practice archery with him so they do, for several long hours while Aerys tells stories and asks questions and by the time Tywin slips down beneath his sheets in the quietude of his own chamber, he feels as though he has been at Dragonstone for half his life.

*

“Come, I want to show you something!” Aeyrs declares when Tywin has already lived at the castle for several moon turns and they have bruised and wounded each other with both wooden swords and real ones, in practice sessions that seems to intensify with every parry, every winning stroke. Neither of them admits defeat: Aerys is quick and fierce, Tywin strong and unyielding – _give it a rest before one of you take it one step too far,_ the master-at-arms always says and shakes his head.

“It's the best room in the entire castle,” Aerys adds, when Tywin doesn't seem appropriately excited at the prospect. He is exhausting to be around, but almost impossible not to find appealing, Tywin thinks, not for the first time. There's a force in him, a fire. 

They walk up the stairs to the highest level of the Stone Keep where the walls are scales and Tywin has to stop trying to follow their patterns with his gaze for fear of losing his balance as they continue in circles. On both sides of the door where they finally stop, gargoyles greet them, their mouths open and their teeth bared. 

“This is the Chamber of the Painted Table.” Aerys unlocks the door and stands there, palms outstretched and a sly grin playing on his lips. He has most likely stolen the keys from his father, Tywin realises, and looks over the other boy's shoulder into what unfolds before him as a surprisingly large room of an intricate design, even for this castle. 

“A war room?” 

Aerys nods. “Aegon had it made before the Conquest.” 

They step inside; Tywin's gaze immediately travels to the massive table at the heart of the room, a physical map of Westeros that appears even more impressive by the way the light enhances it, falling from north and south, from east and west. It's a war room made to conquer the whole of the world, he thinks, leaning forward to locate at Casterly Rock. 

“Impressive,” he offers. 

Aerys looks proud. “It is, isn't it? Does it make your war room seem pale in comparison?”

It does, but Tywin isn't going to admit that so instead he walks around the table, looking at it from the opposite side. He looks at the curves of the mountains, the plains and lakes and narrowing roads through forests and beyond. It seems to beckon, to want to pull them into its promises and possibilities. He thinks about the Hall of Heroes where he had played war games as a boy. Games of maps and history, of challenging Kevan to defend the West in imaginary scenarios where Tywin invaded him from the South, from the North, from across the sea sometimes. Kevan had held his territory - ever the dutiful warden - but Tywin had always won, because his imaginary forces conquered vast expanses of land on their way across the map, outnumbering Kevan's by far. 

They had played that game for days at times, untiringly and unaware of everything else, just the two of them, forming a world of their own. 

“Dragonstone is at the heart of the map, just as it should be,” Aerys says, not quite catching on to the game when Tywin explains it to him. “From here, Aegon controlled the seven kingdoms.”

A while later, as they have fought their war and gone back and forth with their armies, Tywin looks at Aerys's hand on the table, how the Blackwater Bay engulfs it. “Dragonstone barely has soldiers,” he points out, levelly. “How many lords are under your command here?”

“I hold the power of King's Landing.” Aerys avoids the question, his hand travelling hungrily over the water and up towards the land, putting Duskendale and Rosby under his palm before he pauses in front of the largest formation on the table. 

“My forces can take King's Landing.” Tywin says it calmly, moving to stand behind the depiction of his home, the rock that looks small here but holds considerable power, he thinks to himself. Seeing it like this, towering over the Westerlands, reminds him of it. “Because your small army leave certain distances wide-open-” he shows Aerys on the map, “-I will have no trouble moving through the Riverlands here, summoning even more soldiers.”

He moves again, towards the raised seat that is at the precise location of Dragonstone. From there, he understands, one will be able to see the entire map unfold like a revelation. There is something about this room that reminds him of a sept, something ritual about its construction and purpose; he can almost see Aegon the Conqurer kneeling here in prayer for the upcoming battles. 

“It doesn't matter,” Aerys says, his voice suddenly heated, _jealous_. “Your army of farmers and lesser lords is not going to take King's Landing from the King on the Iron Throne.”

“I did.” Tywin takes the seat, keeping his eyes on his opponent. He can switch so quickly, like the flames suddenly go out in him and he becomes cool ice instead. 

Aerys draws a sharp breath. 

Then he sits down too, so forcefully he is almost upsetting Tywin's balance – which is much more than he has ever managed during sword practice – before he regains it and pushes back. As their eyes meet, Aerys bursts into laughter and the sound of it is filling the entire room. If anyone were to witness them now, Tywin thinks, they would resemble much younger boys at play, trying to push each other off a mythical seat. Aerys gets to his feet again. 

“You have _nerve_ ,” he says, still laughing. 

Tywin eyes him, not laughing but smiling, almost in spite of himself. 

And Aerys slaps his shoulder and speaks of the wonders they will do together. _The dragon and the lion,_ he says, laughing heartily. 

It's a game to him, this seat they share. 

It's a game because whatever happens, he has already won.

*

For the traditional tourney that winter, Tywin travels to King's Landing with Prince Jaehaerys and Aerys who is the one who has been looking forward to the event the most.

“My uncle is participating, against my grandfather's wishes,” Aerys says, climbing into their carriage. “He won his first joust when before he was even a man grown.” 

“My brother Kevan wrote to tell me he is jousting, as well.” Tywin suspects that it's Tygett or Gerion who truly wishes to enter the tournament but that Father finds them too young, still. Kevan is a good rider and an even better swordsman, but as far as Tywin knows, he has no dreams of being a champion.

“Then perhaps we shall see the two of them meet in combat,” Jaehaerys says pleasantly. He's an odd man, difficult to form an opinion on since he is rarely present at Dragonstone; over the past few months, Tywin has had no more than a handful of conversations with Aerys's father. Now he leans back in his seat and closes his eyes before Tywin has time to say anything. 

“One day I would like to visit Casterly Rock,” Aerys announces as their carriage slowly makes its way along the winding roads leading down from the mountain. “Will you have me as a guest there, Tywin?”

Tywin thinks of Father and his whores, thinks of the one who has moved in, the one who he had caught giving orders to Father's knights mere days before Tywin's departure. He thinks of the wealth of Dragonstone and the lesser lords all around Lannisport, emptying Father's treasury. It's a stitch in him, a permanent sort of worry.

“It would be my pleasure, of course,” he answers correctly. “One day.”

Aerys looks satisfied with the answer and for much of the remaining journey, they pass time by discussing historical battles taking place in the lands they travel through while Jaehaerys sleeps. A fractured and unsound sleep, judging by the sounds emerging his lips and the way he frequently jerks awake. 

“Father is not well,” Aerys says it evenly when he catches Tywin looking at him. “He has never been strong, they say.”

There is something disturbingly gentle in the way he cares for the pale, sickly man. Something oddly accepting in his movements and words, as though he finds it perfectly common that sons have to tend to their fathers like a mother would tend to a child. Tywin assumes it is the Targaryen way. In hopes of keeping their blood pure, they have poisoned it and will forever bear the consequences. _For every great Targaryen warrior there are twenty madmen,_ Father says in his head. 

Jaehaerys groans in his sleep before opening his eyes, looking utterly disoriented for a moment. 

“Forgive me, Aerys,” he mumbles. 

“Don't worry, Father.” Aerys looks down at his father who has closed his eyes again; he suddenly seems older, Tywin thinks. Less of a wilful child, more of a man who might become king one day.

*

At the Red Keep, the feast after the tournament is as grand as expected, surpassing everyone's expectations, Tywin understands from the way the high lords and ladies are talking to each other. He feels a sudden gratefulness as he learns that Father is absent from the occasion, that he's sent Kevan and Tygett with Genna and the Freys. The memory of Father's last visit to court still lingers in his mind as the time when he finally did what everyone had been waiting for and brought his whore with him, promptly earning himself a new title: _the toothless old lecher._ In Lannisport they still laugh about it, or so they say.

Grinding his teeth, Tywin pushes back the trail of thought as he stands outside the feast hall, searching for his brothers in the crowd around him. 

“Cousin,” a voice says. When he turns around, it's Joanna who stands there instead, tall and beautiful and imposing, just the way he remembers her. She is arm in arm with a dark-haired woman of the same age – the Princess of Dorne, he understands after they have exchanged pleasantries. 

“He is just as handsome as you described him,” the Princess of Dorne says with a smile.

“Naturally.” Joanna smiles back at her friend, giving Tywin a quick glance that he cannot interpret which makes him feel oddly _unsettled._ “He's a lion of Lannister, after all. We are a striking lot of lords and ladies.” 

The Princess of Dorne giggles and Tywin says nothing because he doesn't know the game they are playing. 

Hours later, their paths cross again on the dance floor where the dancing couples appears to have had one goblet of wine too many for their own good. Tywin catches Joanna's gaze over a loudly affectionate lord and his new wife who has claimed a bench for their dealings; to his relief she nods towards the door, he crosses the floor and they make their escape. 

It's still warm for a winter's night as they come out of the darkening castle; he offers Joanna his arm when they walk down the steps to the garden in the centre of the Red Keep, their arms still linked. Joanna speaks of court and all its correct, well-behaved drama. It amuses him more than he lets show, listening to her stories, her way of turning a common scene into something worth telling. 

In return, she asks him about Dragonstone and they compare experiences from the Targaryen households like children comparing notes before being questioned by their maesters. Tywin observes her as she talks, her face full of life and passion and her voice rising and falling with her words. She makes for excellent company, he thinks, not for the first time but with a new wistfulness creeping inside the thought. There's an almost thrilling precision to her movements and words, the same kind of perfectly measured composure that follows her whatever she does. 

“I hear the wedding is planned for the end of next year,” she says, leaning against the back of a stone bench. Tywin remains standing, facing her. _He is just as handsome as you described him_ , the Princess of Dorne says in his memory again and Joanna _smiles_. 

He clears his throat. “Yes.”

“The bride is still so shy you would never imagine she soon will stand before a whole hall of people and declare her love.” She makes an amused little noise. “We all expect her to faint during the ceremony.” 

Tywin has seen Rhaella Targaryen a few times and he is prone to agree. Aerys has informed him his sister was summoned to court by their grandfather to break her habit of intense shyness, temper her against the bustling court life. Judging by evidence from the occasions where Tywin has met the young woman, it has helped very little. 

“Aerys is uninhibited for them both,” he says, looking from Joanna to a flurry of frosted flowers to her right. They seem to have been preserved exactly the way they were when the first chill came. 

She smiles. “He is a little bit overwhelming, is he not?” 

“Just ever so slightly,” Tywin agrees, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his tone and is rewarded with a soft laugh. The sound of it stays in him. No one laughs quite like Joanna, of this he is certain. It is unlike any other laughter, entirely different from the mocking laughter of his childhood and bearing no resemblance to the sort of laughter that characterizes fools and coy simpletons who will laugh for nothing at all.

He wonders if she remembers the summer of their childhood when she had visited Casterly Rock with her father and Tywin, wanting to impress his older cousin, had told her of the old lion deep down in the cells of the castle. _Legend says it will only follow kin,_ he had told her, watching her eyes widen. _When she is released she will wreck havoc on the her enemies but bow her head to the true creatures of the Rock._ Joanna had demanded to see it and they had, he remembers, they had been running along the damp corridors where their footfall woke half-forgotten prisoners and sleeping bats; her hand had all but touched the lion's mane, he remembers, too. The lion had looked them both in the eye, not moving. Then, the great animal had lowered its head and Joanna had grabbed Tywin's arm, terrified and delighted, before they ran as fast as they could towards the light from the sun. 

When he thinks of his childhood, he doesn't remember laughing, but he _had_ laughed then, slumped in the grass outside the castle, their arms and legs criss-crossed, their hearts racing. 

“Oh, and Kevan did well in the tournament.” Her voice nearly startles him; he drags himself out of the follies of his own mind. “I saw a couple of young ladies looking at him when he unhorsed his second knight.”

“He is the knight of the family.”

“Not you then? I believe you would make a finer champion.” She raises an eyebrow, half-teasing, half-inquiring and Tywin isn't certain he knows where the conversation is headed. He searches for traces of mockery in her tone, in the same way he still holds the remark made by the Princess of Dorne in his mind, _weighing_ it. When he doesn't answer, Joanna starts walking again and he has the distinct impression he ought to have done something differently though he cannot say _what._

“Will you return to Lannisport after the wedding?” he asks instead. 

“Yes. I suppose I shall have to wed, too.” The lack of enthusiasm in her voice is flagrant and she does not seem to bother hiding it; he tries to meet her gaze but she looks straight ahead. “Father is negotiating with the Leffords for Stefford and me both.”

“The Tooth.” Tywin averts his eyes. 

“Yes. The Starks turned Father down,” she says. 

“Unsurprising.” 

There is no reason the Starks would bind themselves to a house in decline, not with such a promising heir as Rickard Stark. 

“Certainly. And it's for the best anyway,” Joanna says, a touch of forced light-heartedness in her voice. “I cannot imagine a worse fate than Winterfell. The name alone sends a chill down my spine.”

He tries to imagine her in the North, wrapped in wolf's fur to ward off the cold. Her fiery spirit tempered by the frosty silence of the woods up there, its stern, joyless people. 

“The Golden Tooth will suit you better,” he offers even if that, too, is half a lie. 

She frowns and a small shadow crosses her face. “My brother is marrying their daughter; her fortune is as good as his already and he doesn't _mind_. I hardly think I ought to suffer the dull Lord Lefford for the rest of my life because of military strategy.”

People have wed for far worse reasons than that and moreover she is a noblewoman and thus expected to supply their house with an alliance to a man of good birth and give him a couple of children; it is hardly such a terrible fate, it is a fate they all share. Tywin means to say this, but he finds it surprisingly difficult to form the words because he does not agree with them. Not here, not now. Not for _her_. He pictures Joanna being wed to Lord Lefford and it is enough to make him clench his hands behind his back. 

“No, you are quite right.” He looks at her for a long while, wondering if any man could ever grow tired of the sight, wondering if Leo Lefford will. It is said that he is as sour as he is rich - a plump, lethargic sort of man who will fit Tywin's cousin as badly as Emmund Frey fits Genna. “You deserve a far better husband than that.” 

“That is kind of you to say.” Joanna looks up. 

“I was not being kind,” he protests, caught between his own conflicting emotions which twists his voice, hardens it. “It was merely a reflection on your qualities.” 

“Thank you, all the same.”

And he wants to say something more - something that will make her smile again, but he has never been good at entertaining people so the worlds remain in him, unspoken.

*

“Tell me more of your cousin Joanna,” Aerys begs of him on the way back to Dragonstone.

“I do not know Lady Joanna very well,” Tywin lies, because he can spot the seed of covetousness in Aerys's gaze, the dark edges of it already fortified in the way he speaks her name. His face is the same as it had been on the seat of Dragonstone when his hands were outlining the maps of his realm; the expression he wears when he is reaching for something, taking aim, and he won't give it up. Tywin pushes the thoughts of Joanna to the back of his mind.

Aerys smirks but says nothing else.

 

**IV.**

He returns to Casterly Rock like a hero from a song. 

It's not summer and he is ill-suited to wear the virtues of a knight even at eighteen, but as he spurs his horse along the kingsroad, Tywin at the very least feels the _weight_ of myth and expectation accompany him. It's the season for it, apparently. Aerys had been named Prince of Dragonstone since the tragedy at Summerhall left the Targaryens bereaved of their heir and while the event had left a taste of something bitter in Tywin's mouth, he had offered his condolences without betraying anything other than the formal and expected compassion. 

When the rider had stormed into the Red Keep to search for Tywin, Aerys had done the same. _I wish you luck, my friend._

“I think we had better leave immediately, my lord,” his father's knight had said, handing him the message he had been sent to King's Landing to deliver. 

And so they had. 

Kevan greets him at the Lion's Mouth. He's fully armoured, carrying the Valyrian steel Tywin had custom-made for his last nameday and sent from Dragonstone. It gleams in the faint sunlight that reaches them through the stretched-out spring clouds. 

“Tywin.” He smiles, placing a hand on Tywin's shoulder. “It's good to see you. Father wishes to speak with you before we do anything else.”

Nodding, Tywin walks with his younger brother up the stairs, thinking it odd to be back home while at the same time he feels as though he has never left at all, that he will never truly leave it. This place is in their blood; this is their home, their core, their _purpose_. 

He sees his father at a distance and as he approaches, the sight of him something familiar and strange at the same time. _When did he get so old and fat?_ While Lord Tytos has never been a man made for battlefields, he had at least been a good swordsman and an even better archer for as long as Tywin can remember. The man appearing in front of him now looks like someone who wouldn't be able to fend off a single enemy, let alone raise his banners and march into battle. 

“I give you command over our armies, Tywin,” Father says immediately, as though he can read Tywin's mind. “The Tarbecks have rebelled and last we heard, it appears they have made common cause with the Reynes.”

_You discarded their honour when you gave your only daughter to the Freys,_ he thinks, but doesn't say. 

“Kevan tells me we have lost fifty men already,” he says instead. 

Father nods, slowly. “I'm afraid we have. They managed to take advantage of the element of surprise.”

They hold a war council of sorts in the same room where Father once refused to execute Lord Tarbeck for fear of starting an open conflict. It seems very long ago. Tywin looks at the map of the closest keeps around Lannisport and thinks of the boy he was, the boy who had stood in this room then, thinks of how his father had turned on his heel and left, disregarding all counsel. The old irritation washes over him, fragments in his mind of words already said return to him, but he finds that they pale somewhat in the light of the present situation. 

This time, they all listen to him. 

The first thing he does is ordering fifty new men from the lords nearby to replace the fallen soldiers. He writes the letter without hesitation, asking for men fitted and kitted to march under his command against Tarbeck Hall the following day and hands it to the rider without as much as a word. It's not until the man has disappeared that he wonders, for a second, if the number is too high, if he demands too much. But it's not an invitation to a Spring feast, he tells himself. It's a _muster_. He is a high lord summoning his sworn men to his cause and the important thing is that he does it in such a way as to leave no doubt, no trace of hesitation in the minds of his vassals, that he can be trusted to lead them to victory. And that he will not tolerate anyone refusing his orders. 

In these decisions, he knows with sudden and perfect clarity, their whole fate is bound. 

As he is leaving, he feels his father's hand on his arm and turns around. They look at each other for a moment, both of them silent. Everyone has always told him that he has his mother's face and his father's eyes and as he looks into them now, he tries to see something of himself in there, tries to follow the trace of him in the older man. He sees nothing. 

“Good luck, Tywin,” Father says and there is an apology between the words, laid bare in the way his father lowers his gaze momentarily, like an animal admitting defeat. Tywin remembers a journey to King's Landing, remembers Jaehaerys asking his son for forgiveness and the strange scene that had played out between them; he remembers thinking that no father should ever ask his son for forgiveness, begging like a child. Aerys had patted his father's arm, offered reassurance. 

His mouth twisting with disgust, Tywin nods; he is not meeting his father's eyes.

*

They reach Twinbrook Keep early the following morning and Tywin is almost impressed to see the crowd that has gathered around it.

The men who stand here are fighting as he bids, he realises for the first time, letting his gaze sweep over them. These are his men, the currency of his war. And they are not doing it for honour, they are not doing it for _him_ or because they care about the fate of the Lannisters, they are doing it because he owns their fields, their cottages, their fishing boats. Casterly Rock owns the mills where they grind their corn, the inns where they drink their ale pays taxes to him and most of the commoners in this area will never, not once in their lives, travel beyond a territory that does not directly or indirectly belong to the Lannisters. 

The Lord of Casterly Rock offers coin for their swords in battle, reasonable compensation for their widows and children if they fall and that is all they ask for. In return, they fight when he tells them to. He has no right to demand any more from them and they have no right to defy him. It's a simple agreement though rarely popular. Few men enjoy the thought of death; few men enjoy ordering the death of others. 

_Such is the burden of command._ His father would return to those words during the long hours they spent in his office because Father has never been able to stand the idea of being hated, Tywin knows, and so he tries to avoid mustering the commoners and fights with his own guardsmen, his own knights, his endless compromises stretching thin over their lands. Tywin is not his father. The men that have gathered here hate him without hesitation; Tywin sees it in their eyes. Their wives hate him. The children would hate him if they understood. To the lord of the keep Tywin's call for men means his own land will suffer for as long as the fight continues and far beyond it if they are unsuccessful. 

He feels their dislike spur him on as he rides up to them, feels it settle around him as a set of armour, of _conviction_. People hurry to forget the hardships of war when the land stops burning just as they forget the rigours of winter with the first ray of spring sun – but they will never forget a weak leader. Father's shadow hangs over these lands, but Tywin is not his father's son and he is eager to prove it. 

He swings down from the house and goes to Lord Twinbrook who gives a curt bow. 

“This is what I could muster up, my lord.” 

Tywin looks at the men and nods back. “You have done well.” 

A faint flicker of surprise passes over the man's feature before he nods again, only this time he bids farewell. 

“I shall pray for your victory, my lord.”

*

On the first day of battle, they defeat two dozen men fighting under the banner of Castamere.

On the seventh day of battle, they corner a small part of Lord Tarbeck's forces in a glen, forcing a battle that leaves the Lannisters with a few losses but the enemy flattened. Tywin divides his army into two and sends Kevan with one large troop to surround the remaining army at Tarbeck Hall and starve them out. _A very bold move,_ Ser Payne, the young Captain of the Guards, tells him. _Or a very foolish one._

On the twentieth day, the battle comes to a halt as Ser Payne and Tywin captures Lady Reyne, fleeing the castle with her three sons. Payne rides back to their camp with the woman who remains silent all the way, while it falls upon Tywin and Tygett to hoard the boys. The youngest sits in front of Tywin on the saddle, crying quietly and he wonders if the boy's father will bend the knee without a struggle; as the boy turns his head and looks at him, wide-eyed and pale, he almost hopes for it. 

On the thirtieth day of battle, Tywin stands face to face with the Red Lion of Castamere who eyes him with a half-smile. He stands surrounded by Lannister guards, overpowered and disarmed, but unbowed. 

“I have not seen you since you were a suckling babe,” he says, spitting blood on the ground between them. “It was not so long ago.” 

“You have lost,” Tywin says, calmly. “Will you accept my terms of surrender and bend the knee?” 

Lord Reyne scoffs. “No stripling boy will play lord over me.”

“I understand.” Tywin nods. 

The following day at dawn, Lord Reyne hangs together with his entire household. The boy that rode with him hangs beside his mother and Tywin allows himself to look at him one last time before he orders the men to take everything of value from the small castle before they leave. 

On the final day of battle, they ride up the alley leading to Tarbeck Hall where Kevan waits for them and Tywin feels a rush of relief at the sight of his brother. 

“You're a boy, playing at war,” Lady Tarbeck curses when Tywin enters the keep. The Lannisters have defeated all of the soldiers sworn to the Tarbeck and their cause, have taken their estates and pillaged their lands and the only thing that remains is a bitter old woman and her half-dead husband who are both holding on out of sheer stubbornness. 

“Lord Reyne would disagree,” Ser Payne interjects. “Well, he would, if he still had his head.”

Her death, he thinks, is long overdue and he would march up to her and cut her throat himself but this is not the way it's done. He is surrounded by men, watched by his brothers and his Captain of the Guard and he will show them today, just as he has shown them every other day of this war they've fought, what a Lannister of Casterly Rock truly is. 

Tywin takes a step forward. “Do you accept my terms of surrender-” 

“ _Never_ , boy.”

Again, Tywin nods, before turning on his heel. 

Later, they stand on top of a hill in the dusk, their gazes straight ahead not to miss a second of the scene taking place before them. There's a chill in the air but he can nearly pretend that the flames from the fire are enough to warm him up, their heat reaching over the entire land. It's over. A slice of history is done with, forever extinct and he is the reason. He has changed a portion of the Westerlands with his deeds; he has made a difference, _forged_ it. When he closes his eyes tonight, he will see this, he knows. This: the fire, the destruction, the faces of those who did not bend to his will, the faces of everyone who fought on his orders and won - their wild relief. He will see it and he will remember everything. 

_Here's to you, father_ , he thinks as he watches the towers of Tarbeck Hall crash to the ground with a rumbling, thunderous groan; the sound of victory like a thunder in him, too, leaving its distinct mark in his bones, spelled out in blood. 

“Seven hells, brother,” Tygett comments, riding up behind him. 

“Hear us roar,” Kevan adds and gives a short laugh. 

Turning his head from the destruction, Tywin looks at him, looks at the smile that appears beneath a thick layer of dirt and blood and ashes on his brother's face and suddenly – feeling more light-hearted than he has in years - he smiles, too.

*

Before he returns to Casterly Rock as a victorious commander of his father's army – _such brilliant ruthlessness_ , Ser Payne says in his memory, his voice thick with admiration – Tywin makes a stop at uncle Tyrion's estate.

Joanna is the one who greets him, her steps hurried as she walks down the stairs and she stops in front of him, close enough for him to feel her breath on his skin. 

“You won.” The relief in her voice is so evident, so _overwhelming_ that he almost loses his composure immediately. 

“Yes,” he says, thinking it a rather foolish thing to affirm. 

She steps even closer, studying him. There are servants about, walking past them; there is a noise coming from the great hall of the keep and Tywin is certain he had seen a glimpse of his lord uncle as he entered. And furthermore, this is a foolish indulgence no matter what uncle Tyrion says, no matter what Genna has convinced Father to agree to: marriages are made out of politics, not passion. Yet he stands here, seeing nothing but her, with no desire for anything beyond _exactly_ this. She smells of rose water and spices and he has just won his first victory, it hits him again here like a jolt to his chest; Joanna seems to read his mind because she smiles, raising one hand to the crest on his breastplate. Her fingers look pale against the golden lion. 

“I hoped you might come before you went to battle. I wanted to wish you luck.”

Tywin holds her gaze. He certainly is ill suited for gallantry and courting, now more than ever before, but Seven help him if he isn't going to try at least once. “Would you have given your favour?” he asks, wondering if his discomfort is visible. 

She laughs, a soft and uncharacteristically gentle sound. 

“By the look of things you don't _need_ my favour,” she says. “But you always have it, dearest cousin.” 

A rare hope unfurls in his chest at her words, spreading like flames from a fire. He doesn't know what Genna has said or to what extent she has intervened, but he knows that he does not intend to bind Joanna to him in a marriage mirroring his sister's. And he knows that he is not going to disgrace her with any castles built on air and lies and the follies of his father. 

“My father has not left me with much,” he says bluntly, feeling her gaze on him while he speaks. “But I – _we_ – could change that. I _will_ change things. And I would do right by you, Joanna, I swear it.”

Joanna looks at him for a long time, her hand that rested on his chest before is moving up to touch his cheek, very lightly. “I have never doubted that.”

*

He is no longer a boy, innocence is long past him, and on the eve of the feast thrown in celebration of his victory over the Raynes and the Tarbecks, Tywin finds his father in the Stone Garden. It's late; most of the visitors have gone home and those who have not are sleeping in their chambers for the night.

Father sits slumped on a bench in the middle of the garden, like an overgrown child who has escaped his own bedtime. 

“Tywin, hello.” Even his smile is unsteady; he had at least five cups of wine during the supper and by the look of it, he has had at least another five since then. He appears softened in more ways than one, in more ways than Tywin can remember from before he left for Dragonstone. He's fatter and the edges of his features are blurred, but the change is on the inside more than anything, it's inwardly, looking at Tywin from behind those watery, bloodshot eyes. “Did you enjoy your celebration? It was a good feast, wasn't it? That song...” he shakes his head, as though in disbelief. “They have written a song about you and you are barely a man grown.”

There's a sadness in his voice that has always been there. Tywin can see now as if from a distance; he can see the ugly swelling behind his father's words, a blend of guilt and endless pity for his own fate. There's something greedy about it; it leaves nothing but contempt for everyone else.

“Go inside, Father. The servants will find you here-”

Father waves his hand dismissively. “What do I care if they find me?”

Looking around, Tywin almost expects to see Father's whore somewhere as well but the garden is empty except for the two of them. While he was away, his brothers have told him, she had taken even further liberties with the servants and Kevan has seen her entertain at least one of the knights. Even Gerion had sounded troubled by the way things are. 

“I wanted to speak to you, Father,” Tywin says, swallowing his resentment. 

Father's gaze is faraway, roaming over the contours of the rocks forming a mountain in miniature in the north of their garden. “We are speaking.”

“I wish to have your permission to marry.”

There is a long pause, then his father's voice hardens. “I hardly think you require my approval any longer."

_I cannot remember ever having it._

“You are the Lord of Casterly Rock,” Tywin retorts, sharper than intended. 

“That I am.” Father raises an eyebrow as though this is a revelation to him. It might as well be, for all he seems to care about it. “So you wish to have my permission to marry? Am I wrong in assuming it is your cousin Joanna you wish to wed?”

“No,” he looks out over the garden. “That would be correct.”

“She's a lovely girl, your cousin,” Father concedes. 

No, Tywin thinks. Joanna isn't lovely. There is nothing loveable about her at all - she is _remarkable._

It had been Genna who sought him out the night before he rode off to Tarbeck Hall; it had been Genna who had taken the issue in her hands, stripped it of all other implications and associations and simplified it by asking him if he could imagine anyone but Joanna as the Lady of Casterly Rock - _his_ lady of Casterly Rock. On the eve of battle, the choice had been simple. 

It still is. Out of all the choices he has made in his life, all the choices he is yet to make, he cannot imagine anything being simpler than this.


	2. Chapter 2

**PART TWO**

 

**I.**

 

For their first year as husband and wife the storm clouds rarely leave the sky. It's a year of grey autumn that never truly seems to give in to the cold from the north but remains in the landscape, shivering. 

They travel a lot, that year. To introduce themselves and get used to their duties, together and apart. 

“It does feel good to be home,” Joanna jests as they once again sit in a carriage on their way to King's Landing. Even now summer lingers on her skin; Tywin observes her for a long while, still somewhat unused to her presence, the ease with which they have merged their lives. 

The first time they attend a royal feast as a couple wed, they stand together awaiting their names to be called with the rest of the high lords and ladies and Tywin finds it odd that it should feel almost like their wedding, the same silly sensation of being watched by a hundred pair of eyes. He brushes a hand over the front of his doublet. Beside him Joanna adjusts a stray golden curl that has escaped her intricate hairdo, muttering something when it falls back into her eyes. 

“You will have to wear it down next time,” Tywin says, leaning in to assist. 

“That would please you, would it not?” The corners of her mouth twist with amusement. She always lets her hair down for him when they are alone, lets it fall over her shoulders and back and the mere sight of it makes him wish they were not surrounded by people. 

He steps back, formal and correct again.“It would, my lady.” 

Joanna chuckles. She is clad in fine silk and Myrish lace this evening, wearing a dress that is made to match his own clothes; Tywin feels his chest tighten when she looks at him again over all this pomp and glory and she smiles – that defiant, toothy smile that she carries under her lady's face and saves for him. 

“Oh,” she adds in a soft whisper, “if Lord Woodville corners me again to discuss his _inestimably_ pleasant journeys to Dorne, you have to save me, my dear husband, or I shall not answer for the consequences.”

“You have my word,” he assures her, not able to hold back a fraction of a smile. Joanna nods, straightening her back and raising her head, preparing for their entrance. Within a heartbeat she is a lioness: composed and commanding, with the grace of a queen and that edge of clever irreverence that makes her stand out among the well-behaved women of court. 

And when the heralds call out for them, she clutches his arm and Tywin leads her inside, feeling like the most important man in the Seven Kingdoms.

*

What surprises him the most is how there is a certain kind of life – slow, unassuming, seemingly unimportant – that creeps up on them when they stay at Casterly Rock for a longer period of time. They still tend to their duties of course, there is no escape from those. Tywin works especially hard that first year of their marriage, trying to establish a better control and use of the many gold mines on their land. For most of Father's rule, they have fallen into neglect but Tywin intends to change that with the help of Lord Twinbrook; offer a man a share – however small – of your spoils of war and he will extend his duties to include whatever you need assistance with. Men's greed is constant, Tywin thinks sometimes as he sits with his ink and paper, and at those moments the world seems so clear to him as it's unfolding at the back of his mind, every corner of it seemingly within reach.

When the winter never comes, they go hunting together, staying close to the castle so they never have to bother finding lodging for the night. Joanna is a good rider and not bad with a bow; during their first hunt she fells a few grouses and insists on having them cooked when they return to the Rock – Gerion and Tygett cheer for her hunting skills all the way back and she humours them by betting that they can't catch half as many the following day. They can, but she accepts defeat. 

In the evenings, they work and read. Tywin keeps up with his correspondence in his chambers while Joanna goes through the library, finding the selection of books at Casterly Rock a vast improvement over the collection in her childhood home. Despite the expenses, Tywin orders a few rare volumes on Valyrian history from a bookseller in Oldtown as a gift for her and Joanna devours them in less then two days. For most of those days, she sits in her in her favourite chair by the largest window in her private chambers, feet dangling mid-air and her hair held back with a ribbon and he will always remember her exactly like that: absorbed in her own thoughts and then looking up at him when he enters the room, running her tongue over her bottom lip. And there is something _grand_ in these small things, he realises, something just right in her simple gestures in this room, in the curve of her lips as she grins. In the midst of the commonality of their everyday life, she is anything but common. 

She reaches for him and he walks up to her, pulling her to her feet. 

“Husband,” she says, smiling. “I have an idea I like to discuss with you. About the trade routes to the Iron Islands.” 

The following day, they make changes to his office so it will fit two people rather than one. 

 

 

**II.**

The message that Aerys Targaryen is named King of the Seven Kingdoms reaches them the same day as the first snow falls and the storm clouds dissolve like smoke in the cold winter air. 

The message that summons Tywin to court arrives within a fortnight. He reads it with a slight unease that shifts gradually into triumph as he understands what the summon is likely to mean for him. 

“I will go with you,” Joanna announces as she, too, has read the letter. 

“Are you certain?” He looks up, frowning. Memories from their wedding surface unbidden, whirling at the edges of his mind at all times but especially now. _It does not matter what he did_ , Joanna had told him when Tywin had asked about it. _It's unimportant. He's unimportant._ Even now he is cold with anger at the thought of Aerys in that room, drunk and stumbling. 

But Joanna merely nods. “Of course. I have always wanted to see the Tower of the Hand.”

“He might have something else in mind,” Tywin folds the message again and puts it away on his desk.

*

The King of the Seven Kingdoms looks more imposing in the council chamber than he does on his Iron Throne. Perhaps they ought to present him to his subjects like this instead, Tywin reflects briefly, scribbling a note to remind himself to speak to someone about Lord Rykker's last complaint regarding the newly built ships for the fleet.

As a king, Aerys is not unlike the solitary boy Tywin once befriended – constantly aware of his own weaknesses, never trusting his strengths to make enough difference, always drawing up plans in his head that will seat him far above the others. He wants to be _untouchable_. Tywin can spot it in the spaces between his glances and his words; he can sense it in the way the king speaks and moves. 

“They think we are mere boys,” Aerys says to him once when they are alone. His face looks pale, his hands pressed flat against the surface of the table. “I am their king, Tywin.”

“No one questions that, Your Grace.” 

When it comes to life at court, they are not so very different: neither of them have a taste for pleasantries and small talk but those are the meat and mead to the men in the small council and Tywin masters the art of it, whereas Aerys does not. Tywin speaks of the tedious matters, asks the correct questions, moves in the gilded halls and long corridors of the Red Keep as is expected of him. He makes no friends, but he is careful not to cause hostility. And of course Joanna is by his side during these events, too, providing an enormous aptitude for the game outside the throne rooms and council chambers that he would otherwise lack. Against their combined efforts, Tywin knows, the King on the Iron Throne stands no chance and it's a pleasant thought that he indulges in after long hours of handling the consequences of the king's less well-considered decisions. 

Aerys looks about to speak, then he frowns and seems to get a hold of his own emotions. 

“It's good that you're here, old friend.” A sudden smile appears on his face. “You will dine with me tonight.”

“I'll be glad to, Your Grace.”

Hours later, Tywin crosses two inner yards and passes quickly under a portcullis, sorting through the thoughts and impressions from a day's work and a night's dining. The chill in the air is welcome after an evening spent in the King's private dining hall, where the fires are burning no matter how warm and dry the night and he can feel the faint suggestion of an approaching headache. It's not unusual but it eases somewhat once he is rid of the stale, hot air of the king's chambers. 

He's tired. 

His work - his _life_ \- requires such steely precision and absolute dedication; it takes it toll on him, he admits in the evenings as he returns to the Tower of the Hand. It would take its toll on anyone, of course. Lesser men have failed spectacularly in the past. Tywin knows all about them by now, he still has piles of the old journals and chronicles on his desk. Governing a realm without giving in to temptations of leniency or too-simple brutality is not done without effort – he has learned this past year that the heart of the matter is to uphold a balance, disperse the weight of the Seven Kingdoms equally and find a way to contain it all without letting it consume him. 

_A thousand eyes, and one_ they say of one of his predecessor in these chambers. They still speak of his spies and spells between these walls, an echo or a whisper from years past. Another Hand is said to have slipped into madness as he slowly realised that every letter he wrote, every conversation he had in these corridors could be overheard and that there is no such thing as a true ally in the Red Keep. He had the secret passage built, Tywin remembers reading in one of the old tomes he's been given. He was the Hand that in secrecy demanded the passage that leads out of the Tower and into the wilds, as a feeble attempt to feel less surrounded but in the end it had killed him – one winter's night he had been found, half-buried in snow, just outside the ladder that would take him back to his chambers. 

Tywin knows that the games they play don't end at the Iron Throne; they cut deeper than anything in the realm, a blood-red trace of ambition and disappointments running across generations and colouring entire legacies. It knows no honour or blood rights, it knows only power and acknowledges only those who are strong enough to wield it. It's a game older than the keep itself and it is the way of the world. 

In the Red Keep and indeed in the whole of King's Landing, there is only one living soul who is not his enemy. 

Her presence calms the very halls of this keep, calms him too, like a voice of reason or a hand in the centre of his chest quieting everything in him. He steps into the chambers they share and Joanna takes over. It's something they never acknowledge in words, but an understanding between them all the same, unshakeable as the stones of Casterly Rock or the city walls surrounding King's Landing. 

“Your sister writes to tell us everything is well with the baby,” she says or: “Cousin Gerion is still trying to plot a course for the Smoking Sea.” It's a simple form of conversation that he does not even have to partake in, if he is too tired for it. 

“I made some changes to the expenses of Casterly Rock,” she says another night, “Kevan has promised to see it carried out.” Tywin nods his approval and pours himself a cup of wine. 

“I have missed you, husband,” she says some nights with her lips brushing over the bared skin of his throat, his hands already around her waist. 

In her company, Tywin lets go of his duties. He hears her advice, shares confidences, asks for her opinions in matters of the realm as well as matters of a less important nature and she, in turn, releases him from his obligations and removes his lord's face with a smile or a touch of her hand. _Trust me_ , she grins and he cannot find a single reason why he shouldn't. 

He steps into their life and breathes. 

 

 

**  
III.**

 

For a long time it seems the gods won't give them any children. 

It's not so noticeable to him because his days are full of work and his thoughts barely brush over domestic matters. When they do, he finds that it does not truly _concern_ him if they have sons and heirs, not as much as it concerns Joanna whose face grows tauter and thinner for every year that passes by without her wish being granted. 

No one at court would dare to mention these things to their faces, but Tywin is the Hand of the King and he hears even the faintest of whispers; he hears that _she is a remarkable woman but barren_ behind the curtains of the gilded halls, hears the badly concealed glee in _so the young lion hasn't put a son in her yet._

“What sort of life is that, to die childless?” she asks him once, anger directed at him and everything around them.

He assures her that he has brothers, that Casterly Rock will flourish even under a nephew's rule and she listens to what he says but doesn't seem to _hear_. 

When she does fall pregnant, it's the height of summer around them and they travel through the Westerlands to attend their cousin's wedding and Joanna takes his hand and places it on her stomach that has begun to grow under her dress. 

“I did not want to say anything before,” she explains in an unusually tender voice. 

“Oh, Joanna,” he says, finding no appropriate words. 

He is not a demonstrative man, nor does Joanna expect him to be, but he feels in this moment an almost overwhelming affection for her. As she smiles and he spreads his fingers, carefully and slowly, to touch her in a fashion that somehow seems entirely _new,_ he loves her with all the strength he possesses; it's a love that forces out everything else in him, rendering it insignificant. 

And he is grateful, beyond words.

*

“She wants to call him Jaime,” Genna says when she's placing his son in his arms. “At least that's what she said before she started to curse the Seven and wish eternal torment upon whatever power that forces women to suffer through childbirth.”

He had not been there to witness it. As soon as the rider arrived at the Red Keep with the message that Lady Joanna was giving birth, Tywin had left, but of course he had not made it to Casterly Rock until a couple of days later. 

“Jaime?” He looks down at the boy in his arms who has a pink face and golden hair and a tight grip around Tywin's finger, as though he wishes to tear it off his hand. His sister had screamed as he held her before, but the boy is silent, his big eyes observing the world. The heir of Casterly Rock, Tywin thinks, unable to hold back a smile. A pink-faced, tiny heir. 

“Apparently he's a knight from some old tome she's read.” Genna smiles, too and he is suddenly very glad that she's here. “Frankly, I think she just wants to name him after herself.” 

“Jaime Lannister,” Tywin says, gently prying open the tiny hand that holds him in an iron grip. “Yes.” 

“She thought you would protest. Of course, _I_ told her you would let her name him after a mug of mead if that's what she truly wanted.” 

Jaime's twin sister, the firstborn, has a similar hold of his hand when he picks her up again. There's an even thicker mane of hair crowning her head, otherwise she looks exactly like her brother, her eyes bright and green like Joanna's.

“That is Cersei.” Genna forestalls his question. 

Cersei, after their late mother. It seems like an apt name for a little lioness; Father will be pleased, he thinks, adjusting her in his arms. The girl is meeting his gaze now, without screaming this time, and Tywin smiles again. She looks like Joanna. They both look like mirror images of each other and of Joanna and there's a swirl in his chest when the realisation hits him, with full force, that these are his _children_. 

“Tywin.” The note of seriousness in Genna's voice as she puts Jaime in his crib and reaches for Cersei makes him straighten his back, pushing aside everything else in his mind. “It was very hard for her. We feared she wouldn't come out of it alive.” 

There's nothing he can say to that, nothing that will suffice, so he simply nods.

Later he stands quietly by the bedside, taking in the sight of her. She's still very pale and his stomach tightens when she opens her eyes. There will be no more children. He is not even going to make it a matter of discussion. 

_“Tywin._ ” She speaks his name as a weary sigh. "I missed you." 

“I'm here,” he says, sitting down beside her; he feels grateful and oddly _humble_ , but he has no words to acknowledge it so he takes her hand and kisses the back of it. “I'm here now.”

 

**  
IV.**

 

The following year is a year of spring clouds and heavy rain. 

In King's Landing, Aerys begins to involve himself in the matters of the Kingsguard to such an extent that Lord Commander Gerold Hightower finds it insulting and the council meetings quickly develop into long sessions of debate, leading nowhere. _What the King dreams, the Hand builds_ , Tywin thinks, arranging and rearranging his irritation behind the composure that has earned him quite a few epithets since he was named Hand. 

Eventually, the White Bull himself decides it's enough. 

“You are a man of reason,” he says, looking sternly at Tywin over the desk in the Hand's private council chamber. “Surely you understand why we cannot blindly accept everyone the King suggests.”

The knight in front of him is a thoughtful, dogged sort of man who takes his duty seriously; as he sits back in his seat, his breastplate glitters in the light from the afternoon sun pouring in from the high windows. 

“Do you have anyone in particular in mind?” Tywin asks, even though he is almost certain he knows the names. 

“Amory Lorch and Gwayne Gaunt.” The names sound like curses in the Lord Commander's mouth. “One is a wild animal without a shred of honour, the other is a boy. Forgive me, I do not understand why His Grace would want their presence in his personal guard.”

Because he is Aerys Targareyn, the second of his name, Tywin thinks and steeples his fingers under his chin. This is a never spoken truth among the men in the small council: their king is not always to be trusted. He is often competent, occasionally brilliant, but there is always a thread of darkness in him that Tywin recognises from Dragonstone, a pull from a different direction that's slowly gaining ground. They never speak of it. They devote a good deal of their time compensating for it or trying to cover it up, but they never mention it in words.

“I will convince Lorch to make a different choice,” Tywin says eventually, after having considered the options. “But the Gaunt boy is young still, surely men as skilled as yours can make a White Cloak of him yet?” 

They observe each other in silence for a while; the Commander is the first to look away and give a curt nod. 

As darkness falls over the Red Keep that evening, Tywin meets the king in the very same room. This time they are surrounded not by afternoon sun but by dusk that wraps itself around the contours and shapes and Tywin can't see Aerys's facial expression as he looks out the window. Today is apparently a relatively good day, judging by the tone of his voice; he has not even showed up for the last dozen of council meetings and Tywin has sat on the Iron Throne twice in less than a moon's turn. It's not a seat he particularly envies his childhood friend. When he goes to bed at night he can still hear Lord Merryweather's inane flattery, nagging at the back of his mind – _His Grace is a wise and worthy ruler_ – and Lord Rykker's slow-witted expounding on matters great and small. If not for the brief but indispensable relief he finds in writing letters to Joanna about the affairs of the court, Tywin is certain he would go as mad as the man who turns around now, looking at him. 

“All men have need for creatures like Amory Lorch from time to time,” he says. “Would you not agree, Tywin?” 

“I would, Your Grace.” He pauses, rearranging his papers on the desk before continuing. “He will be knighted. But the Kingsguard is no place for him.”

It had been simpler than expected, turning the young Lorch's mind away from a lifetime of service in the Kingsguard. Whatever Aerys had offered – and Tywin is certain there must have been an offer – he had seemed content to put it aside for the promise of becoming a landed knight in the Westerlands. 

“And he came to this insight on his own?” Aerys turns around. For a short while there's something open in his gaze, a gash in the way he presents himself, and Tywin can spot the boy he still hasn't forced out of his bones. An honest, curious boy asking his friend for advice. 

“Apparently he did, Your Grace,” Tywin says, thinking that King's Landing is no place for boys.

*

A mere fortnight after the twins' first nameday, Father dies as ignobly as he has lived for the second half of his life. It must, Tywin thinks when the news reach him, be a glorious time for the slanderers. Tywin returns to Casterly Rock – his lordship, his _birthright_ towering in front of him - and finds that it is all in a bit of disarray.

Not surprisingly, he thinks as he looks at the pile of unfinished matters before him. 

He puts the lid over the ink bottle and closes the account book for the evening, getting to his feet after having spent every moment since his arrival working and giving orders to the servants of the household. _His_ household. The thought does not yet sit right in the fabric of his mind; he had thought it would, had expected it to be very much the same as it has been for the last couple of years during which Tywin has made the decisions and asked his father to sign the document as a formality. But it is not the same and he has to repeat the thought to himself a few times, as one would to a child. 

When he was a boy and his dreams were feverishly bold and angry, full of banners and swords, he used to think about the day when the castle would be rightfully his and the lords and ladies of the Westerlands would bow to _him_. Indeed, in his dreams he had sat in his Father's place, much as he did today and accepted the homage of his bannermen. He had promised them protection in return for their sworn loyalty, in the same fashion as he always did in his dreams; his vassals had given him solemn oaths and shown due reference to him as he rose. 

He had dreamed of extracting revenge on the candlemaker's daughter, too. And he had stood there and watched the self-seekers in the vulgar crowd that titled themselves her friends scatter as the woman had been stripped and forced to walk the streets of Lannisport. _A common whore should know her place. It is not at Casterly Rock._ The mob had cheered for her demise, of course. He had expected them to. The affection of the smallfolk is a fickle thing, they are quick to judge and quick to forgive, and easy to appease once you remember this. Tywin himself had watched her parade without any amusement and Joanna by his side had pursed her lips but said nothing. 

Yet a boy's dreams are weightless in these old halls. 

Casterly Rock does no more belong to Tywin than it had belonged to his father. Casterly Rock is theirs but it's a place in its own right, it's their history and their future, it's the home of generations of lords before him who has learned the same things he has learned: everything you do, you carry with you but what matters is the name behind your deeds because that name is your whole purpose and intent. 

He is a Lannister of Casterly Rock and for the first time, he knows exactly what it _means_ , a message hammered into him. 

In the corridor, voices from the hallway downstairs catches his attention before he has taken more than a few steps. He stops, listens. 

“... Gerion says the new knight he installed down on Mad Yoren's lands has been riding around tormenting the farmers.” 

It's Tygett's voice, carrying all the resentment of a young man trying to wring himself free of the bonds of family and obligation without much success. 

“That's hardly Tywin's fault,” Genna says, her voice calmer and clearer. 

There's a ruffling sound and something that sounds like a sigh, followed by footfall before he hears his brother again. 

“... but soon he is in King's Landing again with his pomp and glory. What is it to him if some wretched knight rapes some farmer's wife here – we're the ones who have to listen to the farmer's complaints.”

“Kevan is doing well here and Joanna-”

“ _Kevan_.” Tygett laughs, humourlessly. “He's never doing _anything_ until our dear brother has specifically stated it in a letter.”

“Don't be such a petulant child,” Genna retorts and Tywin can almost see the irritated frown appearing on her face. “It does not suit you.” 

She's wrong about that. Ungratefulness _does_ suit their younger brother. He seems to conveniently have forgotten the tour of the Free Cities that Father had wasted much of Tywin's first hard-earned gold upon, mere years ago. Tywin had not protested against the journey, although he had found it a ridiculous frivolity to meet with the spice lords and cheese kings. Nor had their sire - or Tywin, so far - forced any useful occupation on Tygett and Gerion as they had come of age, but rather allowed them all the freedom a young lord should not posess. 

He will remedy that, he thinks. A useful occupation will serve them both well. 

“This reverence for Tywin.” Tygett's voice is muffled now, as though he has buried his face in his hands; he used to do that as a boy, Tywin recalls. When he was too angry – usually with Gerion or Genna - to endure anyone's gaze upon him. “You and Kevan both. And Joanna – though I will never know why, have you seen him deign to offer _her_ any appreciation lately? But you all worship him. Even Father, in the end... Seven hells, Genna, I cannot draw a breath here without having his permission. One of my earliest memories is of him, berating me for something. I swear it.”

“That's not fair, Tyg,” Genna says. 

He hears the ruffling sound again, footsteps approaching and he promptly removes himself from where he stands, feeling increasingly like the child he once was, a child who would eavesdrop because he did not want to miss anything important.

It feels less difficult to walk away from this. 

Joanna is still dressed when he enters her bedchamber; she's sitting in her favourite chair by the window and looks up, smiling as she usually does when he approaches. He lets his gaze run over her body, her face. She remains the most beautiful woman he has seen, even now, years into their marriage when experience and familiarity has replaced the initial sense of wonder; she says the children have marked her body – _carrying two at the same time is simply cruel, Tywin_ she had claimed once, wrinkling her nose – but he would not even have noticed until she had pointed it out to him.

Childbirth may have given her scars but her head is still unbowed and she is still looking at him with eyes that are clouded and knife-sharp all at once and he can barely refrain from making a defeated noise every time she runs her hands down his chest, asking him if they should go to bed. 

His answer is as always an undeniable yes and afterwards they lie together for a long while; his hand is still entangled in her hair, her leg crooked around his hip. 

“I am thinking of going with you to King's Landing,” Joanna says suddenly. “For a little while now that the children are older. Once everything is settled here, of course.” 

Her fingertips brush back a strand of hair from his forehead and he catches her gaze, tilting back her face with his hand. “I would be glad for your company.” 

“Oh, I know,” she says with such natural confidence that he has to smile.


	3. Chapter 3

**PART THREE**

 

**I.**

This is her room, he thinks long before it truly becomes one of Lady Joanna's personal chambers at Casterly Rock. 

When their betrothal had been made an official agreement many years ago, Tywin had ordered the rooms on the second floor, the ones that once belonged to his late mother, to be redecorated for his bride. He had wanted them to be ready before the wedding, had wanted her to step into her own home. 

In his memory, he stands behind her here, his shoulder pressed to the door frame as she reads or finishes a letter. He watches her struggle with her carelessly bound hair, twisting her head trying to shift the weight of it, keep it up; then she shrugs, as if in defeat, letting the curls cascade over her shoulders and back and he draws a sharp breath, feeling her movements inside him.

In his memory, he stands here, in this very spot a few months ago and kisses her briskly, his thoughts still elsewhere, along the Kingsroad and in the council chambers of the Red Keep. Even Joanna cannot settle his mind lately: there are too many fractions of his consciousness tugging and pulling in different directions and the wine he had been served at supper has merely increased their speed. 

“Tywin,” she says in his memory, “Maester Daron tells me I'm expecting another child.”

“Oh, _Joanna._ ” He wraps his arms around her and feels her hands come around his waist, travel up to his back and shoulders. They stand like that for a long time, the rhythms of their bodies falling into each other; then she inhales unsteadily and he can feel, without looking at her, that she is crying. 

The memories burn slowly with the setting sun, falling across the floor and dancing on the walls. 

There's a book beside the chair even now; it's open but he cannot discern its content from a distance, can't bear to pick it up and disturb the scene. 

He stands in the too-quiet room hours after it has been emptied, hours after she has closed her eyes. He doesn't do anything, he has been told several times already that there is _nothing to do, Tywin_ so he merely stands there with his hands useless and empty and his breath catching every time he imagines a movement from the bed, a flicker of light animating the pale smoothness of death. 

He has lost her. 

She's been torn from him, from this room, from this echoing castle that used to be his home and for a moment he lets the helplessness flood him and he feels tears starting in his eyes. Actual hot, aching, _terrified_ tears. He bites them back, shamed and angry, but it's the sort of desperate anger that has no purpose and no release and gives nothing in return. It merely stays in him, roots inside. 

_One flesh, one heart, one soul._ They were young back then and had found the pompous words so often sung by maidens and bards amusing; he remembers how she had caught his eye over the profuse speeches and grand gestures and grinned at him – her most unladylike smile that had managed to capture all of her spirit, every reason he loves her – and Tywin, feeling something in his chest expand at the sight, had smiled back, thinking the oath that followed the easiest oath a man could ever swear. 

_One flesh, one heart, one soul._

It seems less sentimental now. 

“Is she dead?” Jaime surprises him by waiting outside the bedchamber and Tywin has to pause for a moment, gathering his strength before he looks at his son, who is wide-eyed and pale, pressed up against the wall like a guard on duty. “Is she dead, Father? You said she wouldn't die. You _promised_ -”

“Be quiet, Jaime.” 

“But she wasn't _supposed_ to die!” Tears well up in his eyes as he tilts his head back to stare at Tywin, full of the furious grief of a boy. “She promised she wouldn't, you promised, you _promised!_ ” 

“Do not _weep_ ,” he commands, and his voice is so hard the boy's face distorts into a grimace. 

“Father-”

He scrambles for the cool restraint that comes so easily to him but it suddenly seems lost somewhere in the images of that wretched room; her voice thick and broken with pain and fever, her eyes burning, her words juggled and torn but practical to the end, asking him to re-marry wisely, to think of the realm. The way she had smiled at his response, his own voice a thing apart, hollow and strange: _there can be no one else._

“I was no more than a boy when my own mother died and I did not cry.” 

Jaime gives him a heartbroken glance but says no more; Tywin tries to reconcile him by putting a hand on his shoulder but his son jerks away, running ahead of him to the top of the stairs.

*

For several days, he is left alone.

The servants walk in and out of his quarters, announce his meals and baths and lights his fireplaces and he follows their unspoken biddings; he eats and bathes and shaves and reads his correspondence in the light of a fire. Since sleep eludes him he stays up with his accountant books and trade route evaluations and the ever growing pile of petitions from his vassals. Joanna had done that sort of work, but the pregnancy had taken most of her strength and she had left it for later. She would say that – _for later_ – even as her eyes grew dark with fear and her belly stretched the fabric of her dresses. 

Tywin writes her letters and reads her notes with unflinching, unthinking frenzy, that shuts out everything else. When it is done, all the matters she had not found time to handle, he remains at the desk for the rest of the night, staring out the window at the dawn that is spreading over Casterly Rock. As the rest of the castle awakens, he takes up his quill again and begin anew on something else. 

“Brother,” Kevan says after the days of unbroken solitude. “I am afraid we have visitors.”

“I have not invited anyone.” His voice is strange, unwilling. 

There's a pained expression on his brother's face and moment of silence stretching out between them before Tywin understands and as he nods and rises from his position where he has locked everything, preserved everything, kept everything at bay, Joanna suddenly floods the room and for a few staggering moments, he cannot _breathe_.

*

He has watched the Dornish visitors leave without the promises they had come for when he returns to his darkening bedchamber only to find it less empty than he left it.

For a moment the shape in the chair by the window looks so much like Joanna in her favourite chair that he feels his expression crack, and Cersei gives him a wide-eyed stare as she turns her head, to find that she has scared him. He walks up to her; her cheeks are tear-streaked and her voice unusually brittle. She who speaks like Joanna even if she's no more than a girl, her voice loud and strong and confident. Tywin puts a hand on her arm. 

“Are they gone?” she asks. 

“They have left, yes.”

“I did not like them.” She looks away again, folding her arms across her chest. “The Princess was silly and Prince Oberyn only wanted to see the imp.”

Tywin feels a stab at the word. It is indeed what he suspects the word is on the street. _The Lannister imp._

“His name is Tyrion and that's what you will call him.”

Cersei gives him a sceptical glance, as though she is testing him to see if he truly means what he says. 

“I would rather have Mother,” comes her verdict after a moment's hesitation. 

“You do not get to choose,” he says and he hears the words come out angrier than he intended for them to be. He exhales, tries again. “I believe you should go find Septa Maria now, Cersei. It's time you go to bed.” 

Of all the things the twins did, every prank and mischief Joanna accounted for with an exasperated frown, she had claimed that bedtime was the worst. _The septa is too old to chase them around Casterly Rock every night, Tywin. And they don't listen to the servants._ He begins to see a trace of that obstinacy now. 

When she makes no indication of moving of her own will, he leans down to pick her up and notices the tremble of her lower lip, the way her hands are clenched into angry fists on the armrests of the chair. 

“Cersei,” he tries, making his voice softer. For a moment it's not Joanna she resembles, but Genna. Stubborn, too-tired, red-eyed Genna curled up outside Mother's bedchamber. “Come on.”

*

He looks misplaced in the crib.

It's the same crib they used for the twins, the same crib with the same crimson and gold and the old rattles he recalls that Joanna had found so beautiful. It's the same room, the same colours. But the child is different and it's a difference that jars in him, a feeling in his chest that refuses to settle. 

Tywin has not held the boy yet, barely looked at him. He has been told it's a healthy baby, given the circumstances, but he has not held him and as he observes at him now, he wonders if the child looking up at him with his mismatched eyes knows. It's sheer folly and superstition of course. Fools will say anything about imps – some claim they are in possession of the last scraps of magic, some state they have as little wit as befits their height, most people have never seen dwarves at all. 

Low-born dwarfs are sold or killed at birth, given away so they cannot be a burden to the family; he has to forcibly push the thought away, it's too tempting in this room, much too close. He had thought it as Joanna faded away, as her hold of his hand loosened and Genna stood beside him, soft-spoken but firm – _let her go, Tywin; she's gone_ – and he had still thought it as the septa carried the deformed baby in her arms, wordlessly showing him to Tywin who had nodded curtly; a gesture of acceptance, he thinks now. Of defeat. 

This wretched creature is undeniably, unchangeably a Lannister and there is nothing to be done for it. 

The boy makes a little noise as Tywin walks out of the room.

*

There's a great sense of relief in returning to King's Landing, in leaving the castle behind.

As he's walking up to the squires and the horses, tightening his cloak around his shoulders, he hears Kevan's voice – _no, Cersei, come back here_ – and as Tywin turns around, Cersei comes running and throws her arms around his waist, holding on to him for dear life.

“Don't go.” Her voices falters, _cracks_. 

He means to admonish her childish behaviour, but instead he loosens her grip around him and kneels down to embrace her properly. She's too old for this. Too old to make a scene, too old for her little hands to crumple up his crimson cloak as she refuses to let go; it's the last time he will hold her this way, he thinks, the last time she will bury her face in the crook of his neck and he will cradle the back of her head in his hand. 

“I will come back,” he says. “And when I do, I don't want to see any tears, Cersei. A lioness doesn't cry. You _are_ a lion, are you not?”

After a moment's hesitation, he can feel her nod, like a tremble against his own body.

*

The first time he returns to Casterly Rock after the first long absence, it's Cersei who waits for him in that same spot where he left her, many months ago. He does not admit, even to himself, that he had thought for a brief moment that it had been someone else standing by the Lion's Mouth to greet him.

He does not admit, even to himself, that the reason he has stayed away for so long is because he has dreaded the return. King's Landing is a place of work and rest to him these days, a place of duty and obligation and very little else. 

Here, among the rocks and the roaring waves of his childhood, that stilted crack in him springs to life again as life with her comes back to him, walking around in the rooms and corridors he had made hers. It had never seemed the same to him those first days after her death and it still doesn't. It has lost its sense of home. 

There's so much he wants to tell her.

He had not realised while Joanna was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he had told her about it. 

He had not realised, not fully, how much the castle belonged to her or how much it must change, rearrange itself in her absence. It's not a matter of _if_ , because the world does not bend to the follies of human emotion. It's a matter of _how_ , but the method of it eludes him. 

In the evenings after a serving of wine he thinks he can still see her brush past his vision, a ghost, a blur of motions. His breath catches in his throat every time and he shoves the goblet away and goes to bed but it doesn't erase the overwhelming sense of her in between the walls. 

He returns to Casterly Rock; he loses her all over again. 

 

 

**  
II.**

 

“Father!” Jaime's voice is clear and bright, resounding through the corridors. “ _Father_!”

“No, you cannot participate in the tournament, Jaime.” Tywin quickens the pace, as though he would be able to outrun his son's persistence and conviction. “You're too young.”

“I'm ten!” 

“And the jousting knights are men grown. They will unhorse you in a heartbeat, there is no point for you to enter.”

He looks a bit wounded at that. “But uncle Gerion said-”

Tywin stifles a groan. His youngest brother is more of a nuisance than he is useful, in particular when it comes to Jaime. While it has been a good thing to have the twins remaining at Casterly Rock and not leaving their upbringing entirely in the hands of maeasters and septas, he is beginning to question the influence of Gerion. At least Tywin has successfully wed Tygett to a woman of good birth, even if it had required a level of patience in the face of foolishness that he does not possess and he knows that without Genna's aid, their brother would still be devoting most of his time to travelling the countryside and drinking costly wine snatched from the cellars of Casterly Rock. 

“Uncle Gerion is not your father,” he interrupts. “Nor is he the Lord of Casterly Rock, is he?”

“ _No_ ,” Jaime admits, if somewhat reluctantly. 

They stop outside the Golden Gallery where the preparations for tomorrow's festivities are turning the gilded hall into what looks more like a bustling marketplace down in Lannisport. Tywin looks at his son and heir, who observes the activity with an enthusiasm he usually reserves for dogs, horses and swords he is still too much of a boy to carry. _They burn so brightly_ , Kevan had said once. _Like their mother._ Jaime already stands tall, with his mother's features and Tywin's build, towering over other boys his age. And Cersei – who comes running towards them now, she is always running, everywhere, even though he hears Septa Maria tell her that ladies do not run – is nearly as tall and just as much a mirror image of Joanna with her golden curls tumbling over her shoulders. 

_Nobody will laugh at them_ , he had sworn to Joanna. _Nobody will ever laugh at our children._

It was an easier promise back then, he thinks, spotting the child in the septa's arms.

*

They feast the King of the Seven Kingdoms in a lavish fashion that Casterly Rock has rarely seen under Tywin's lordship. The castle is meticulously prepared, decorated to the very last detail and they serve food and wine that tells a proud tale of how the treasury has fared recently. It's brimming again, in much the same fashion as the treasury of the Red Keep which not even Lord Webber, their new Master of Coin, can find fault with.

Tywin is seated beside his honoured guest in the great hall and remembers the prince who once asked if he could come to Casterly Rock. It is arguably not the same man who sits here today, but here they are, in several ways still unchanged. 

Aerys glances sideways at him, his attention a flurry of different impulses, judging by the looks he gives everyone nearby. “So, how is your youngest son, Tywin? I had expected to see him.” 

Tywin has no doubt Aerys had expected to see the imp of Lannisport, in fact, he very much expects the king to barely be able to contain his desire to behold the boy, just like most of their visitors. The subdued delight in their stares, Tywin thinks with an inward snarl of fury, the raised eyebrows, the twitching mouths. He has climbed high, there are many who want to see him fall. So he presents Tyrion to the lords and ladies without betraying a single emotion. He has sent guards away from the castle for throwing japes around when they had thought Tywin was out of earshot; when the boy grows older, he will have squires his own age and masters who will teach him what little he can be taught - Tywin prides himself on having done everything that can be expected of him.

“He is a bit too young for the feast,” he replies, smoothly. 

“Ah, yes.” Aerys gives him a smile, picking up his mug of wine and putting it down again without drinking. “I suppose he is.”

Jaime and Cersei both sit transfixed at the table opposite them, looking with the same kind of bewilderment at the young Targaryen prince who seems to find them amusing enough to entertain. Tywin lets his gaze linger there. He is very dissimilar to his father even if there is that streak of uncorrupted energy in him that Aerys used to possess, the enthusiastic will to see and understand everything. 

“Rhaegar was knighted earlier this year.” The King is not eating, even if he pretends that he is, Tywin notices. His thin hands are working fervently at cutting up every piece of meat into tiny pieces, pushing them towards the edges of the plate. Hoping to catch the poison someone has planted there with the intention of killing him, most likely. It's only if you study Aerys carefully that you can discern his faltering grasp of the situation, Tywin knows. The muscles around his neck that tightens, the little flicker in his gaze as his eyes narrows. 

As of late, he has stopped drinking from any cup but his own, carrying it with him at all times. He jumps at his own shadow, too, whenever he catches it in a surface or a mirror. 

Tywin nods politely, raising his own cup of wine. “And such a fine knight he is, Your Grace.”

When the dance begins, they sit and watch it too. Aerys doesn't dance unless the occasion truly calls for it – it's one of the many liberties he allows himself – and Tywin has already taken turns with the ladies who expects to dance with the Lord of Casterly Rock. 

He swallows a mouthful of wine, looking out over the hall that's still swarming with festivities and crowds dancing and talking; Joanna would have enjoyed this. Whenever she had been away from court for too long, she used to complain – at least half-serious – that they were being too recluse. It had always been enjoyable to attend these things with her, Tywin thinks. They would take care of their social duties as an entity, often separated but never apart and when they had looked up from whatever conversation that demanded their attention, their eyes would meet across the room, the recognition a taut line between them: _your world is my world._

He is alone in it now and feels the burden of it more sharply.

“She knows her own mind,” the king says suddenly, nodding towards the youngsters on the floor where Prince Rhaegar bows low before Cersei who clasps her hands over her mouth in delight. Behind them, Jaime rolls his eyes. 

“She does,” Tywin agrees.

“A spirited girl. She will make a lovely wife one day. I take it you have higher aims for her than some lord of the Westerlands?” 

“I do, Your Grace.”

And Aerys smiles, but there's a hardness in it, a chill in his eyes. 

 

**  
III.**

 

“I stand by my suggestion that you ought to accept Lord Darklyn's demands in this matter, Your Grace. They are not unreasonable.”

Tywin's verdict hangs in the air of the council chamber. 

“He is defying me!” Aerys taps his fingers on the table, a persistent, dull sound in the otherwise silent room. Everyone refrains from speaking for a long while, as the King and his Hand uphold the silent war that have coloured every meeting this hot summer. “I should have him hanged for treason, not negotiate with him.”

“Lord Darklyn holds an important city and indirectly controls a significant part of the trade in the Crownlands.” Tywin is calm. There is no valid argument against his claim and any conflict, he knows, will take place outside the council room. Even if Aerys has all but dismissed form and protocol over the past few years, certain things still follow some sort of logic. “Has he been noted to fail to pay his taxes, Lord Webber?”

He turns to the Master of Coins, who reluctantly shakes his head. “No, he hasn't.”

“You ought to grant him the town charter he demands and then negotiate the terms as well as any further claims. The town charter is a generous offer on your part, your grace-”

“A true king need not show generosity, Tywin.” 

“He still benefits from it,” Tywin says, not bothering to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “The realm is best served by applying reasonable-”

Aerys's eyes are narrowed to indignant slits, the line of his mouth twitching with held-back rage. “Do not presume you know anything of governing a realm, Tywin. I am not letting you dictate the course of action! I will handle this issue myself.” 

“Then I shall withdraw my counsel in this matter, Your Grace,” Tywin says, bracing his voice. He steeples his fingers under his chin and sits back in his seat. “I wish you luck.”

*

Duskendale is relentless, choking sunlight and dusty streets. And here they stand, a large force from the King's own army, lined up, ready for battle, but entirely powerless for as long as the defiant lords of Duskendale hold Aerys hostage. Lord Deny's terms had not left any room for interpretation.

It's hot even in the middle of the night, Tywin thinks, looking out over the camp that has settled behind a wall of clattering metal and soldier's voices. He feels the now familiar flare of resentment rising at the thought of the king who has brought shame on the Iron Throne – and on his Hand - for this folly. 

“You have until tomorrow,” he says. 

Ser Barristan gives him a glance that at the same time is proud and servile, he's the kind of man who takes pride in serving well. He reminds Tywin vaguely of Kevan, but he's entirely without Kevan's sense of pragmatic reasoning; he tries to imagine his brother here, suddenly wishes he was beside him now instead of this hopelessly gallant man. Then the knight nods, narrowing his eyes.

“And what happens if I fail?” he asks, in a tone that tells Tywin he already knows about – and disapproves of – the continuation of their actions. 

“Then I will have no choice but to storm the city gates and sack the town.” 

The other man looks troubled but Tywin has no patience with the tender consciences and gentle souls of men who ought to know better so he refrains from speaking more on the subject. Unbidden, his thoughts go to Lord Arryn who, years ago, had saw fit to inform Tywin of his personal opinions regarding the matters of justice. 

_I believe killing should not be so easy, Lord Tywin.  
_  
Tywin had responded that a lord can afford a headsman just as he can afford soldiers and knights, but his answer had not appeased the Lord of the Eyrie. Yet, he thinks with dry amusement, even men like Ser Barristan go to war to butcher enemies and high lords like Jon Arryn send thousand upon thousand of men to kill under their banner and suddenly it is not so important who holds the sword or why, as long as the man at the other end of it dies properly. All men who carries a sword dream of glory; no man wants to shoulder the burden of being a butcher so they keep at their make-believe like children playing war games, hiding behind _honour_ and _duty_ when all it comes down to is winning or losing. 

“I suggest you leave while the hour of the wolf is still upon us,” he says; the knight turns around, frowning. “The hour of the wolf. The blackest part of night, when all the world's asleep.”

Ser Barristan gives a curt bow.

“What an apt name, my lord Hand,” he says, before disappearing into the grey swirling shadows.

*

“Spare the boy, Your Grace.” Ser Barristan says in the smoke and ash of Duskendale. He carries the blood-stained cloak of Gwayne Gaunt in one hand, his sword in the other. “I beg you to show mercy.”

“You will have me sparing the life of a boy whose father openly defied me?” Aerys gives the member of his Kingsguard a wavering, undecided look. He still appears to teeter dangerously close to whatever edges his mind possesses, a shrunken, ashen-faced regent without his throne nearby. 

The boy in question – Dontas Hollard, son of one of Lord Darklyn's sworn vassals and no more than a slip of a child – stands silent and pale in between two of Tywin's guardsmen. If he were to become a squire in King's Landing he would serve as a reminder of the King's victory – or his ill-advised quest to Duskendale. It is difficult to tell which it will be and Tywin cares very little either way. 

“Ser Barristan did save your life, Your Grace,” he reminds the king. 

Both men give him a long, searching glances; then Aerys waves his hand in a half-hearted approval and Ser Barristan bows. 

“Prepare the men for departure,” Tywin commands, sheathing his sword and returning to his horse. “We need to cover some distance before nightfall.”

 

**  
IV.**

 

He chooses a bad time to bring Cersei to court, he realises too late, as they dine in the Tower of the Hand and all she has seen for a handful of weeks is political turmoil. It's seeping in from the council chamber, from the King's private chambers, from outside where the king's subjects grow restless and worried and the unrest increases. 

Rumour has it Aerys Targaryen has gone mad and for the first time the words aren't slander, but written in the stone underneath the houses, on the cobbled streets of King's Landing. 

It is, Tywin thinks as he looks at his daughter over the table, difficult to dispel rumours that carry nothing but truth. 

“What will happen to Ser Payne now?” Cersei asks. If he had ever thought her delicate and in need of protection, she has certainly erased all such notions in him after today's events. She had stood there, beside him, watching as Aerys had demonstrated his power by having his guards cut out Ser Payne's tongue in front of half the court. Tywin had looked at her but she had looked straight ahead, a glint of something in her eyes. Excitement, perhaps. 

“He has served the Lannisters well,” Tywin says. He wonders if he would have felt that rush of excitement if he had been witness to such a scene at her age. All he had felt today was a weary sort of anger weaving threads of resolve in him – it is time to act, soon. The Seven Kingdoms are biding their time, he can sense it in the many subtle ways the political game has shifted, in the game spelled out in ink and fought with ravens; he can sense it even in the Keep, the slow undermining of a madman's reign. 

“Why didn't you do anything?” She tilts her head, reaching for a slice of bread. 

“The Hand can't openly defy the king's orders, Cersei.” 

She looks satisfied with the explanation, but there's an uncertainty to her, a few unspoken questions in the room. Tywin cannot imagine that she cares enough about his Captain of the Guard to worry for his well-being, but even so he tells her that he's sent the best servants of the keep to care for the man. 

“Prince Rhaegar will be a good king,” she says when he's done. “He's so _gallant._ And brave.”

It's a child's illusion but Tywin can't bring himself to take it away from her just yet so he nods, reaching for his cup of wine.

*

The Prince of Dragonstone marries Elia of Dorne a splendidly warm spring day.

“She is ambitious,” Kevan says, nodding towards the mother of the bride, standing tall and proud beside her daughter who still looks as pale and frail as Tywin remembers her from their brief stay at Casterly Rock. 

_Sly, devious and irresistible_ , Joanna had dubbed her friend once, and she always had a talent for recognising people's nature, as though she could look straight into their souls. 

“Be that as it may, her daughter is sickly.” Tywin glances at his brother. “Cersei is young.”

It had brought Aerys great and undeniable pleasure to turn Tywin's offer down, of course. _You have served me well, Tywin. But a Prince of Dragonstone cannot marry a servant's daughter._ He is proud for a man they call King Scab behind his back and mock in the corridors of the Red Keep, Tywin thinks, letting his own indignation at the memory slip back behind his composure. There's a story often told among the guardsmen about how one of them once caught the king running around in circles in his throne room, chasing his own shadow and attacking it with a sword. 

_It's a great pity though_ , Aerys says in his memory, as conceited there as he is in person. _Cersei has the beauty of a queen. Just like her mother. Such a waste to keep her at Casterly Rock, I always thought._

“She is,” Kevan agrees. He takes a swallow of wine. “Perhaps you ought to think of a marriage for yourself in the meantime?”

His voice is calm, but Tywin can sense the trail of apprehension in it, spot the doubt lingering between the words that are often spoken, he supposes, though rarely where he can hear it. 

“No,” he replies coolly. 

Kevan hesitates for a moment, before continuing. “I know that you always put the realm before anything else, brother. Now would be a good time to strengthen the bonds to the North, if at all possible.”

They watch Lady Whent and her yongest daughter walk past them; Tywin thinks of the offers he has received and refused over the past few years. One letter at first, then another, then an endless stream of them. He has turned down widows and maidens, heiresses and second daughters, old women and young girls who have barely flowered. 

It is Jaime who ought to strengthen the bonds. The Lords of Highgarden are Aerys's lapdogs, but Tywin has reached an understanding with Lord Tully recently. It will be a good match for both families, he thinks, tying their houses together and strengthening the Lannister name in the Riverlands. Jaime himself had seemed less convinced as Tywin brought him there, but he will make a good husband for Lysa Tully. He has grown up considerably at Crakehall and in a year or two, when he has won a few tourneys and basked in the glory young men crave, he will settle down as the future Lord of Casterly Rock and do his duties. Reluctant and headstrong though he may be, Tywin knows his heir to be a true lion, loyal and fierce once he has set his mind to something. 

Jaime will be their bridge to Riverrun. 

“I have a wife,” he tells his brother who resigns by dipping his head slightly and taking another mouthful of wine. 

They will never speak of the matter again. 

 

 

**  
v.**

 

“You might be interested to know that your brother is coming to visit.” 

Cersei looks up from the book she's reading, curled up in a chair, resembling her mother more than ever. Her eyes are burning even if she attempts to show him the usual calmness she's been adopting as of late. “When?”

“Soon, I should think.”

Tywin has had reports from the already famed clash between the members of the Kingsguard and the Kingswood Brotherhood outlaws, telling him his son had been knighted on the field of battle. A remarkable young man, Ser Arthur Dayne had written. 

“Will you tell him he has to wed Lysa Tully by the end of next year?” Cersei stands tall now, imposing for a young woman; she is a good match for anyone and she is fully aware of this fact. _A lioness, for good or ill,_ Genna had said once. _Never underestimate her, dear brother._

“He already knows about my intentions in that matter,” he says, thinking Jaime might not have realised precisely how advanced the negotiations had been, last time they spoke. But he cannot see why it would pose such a horrible prospect for him, marrying a beautiful young girl of noble birth. 

Cersei gives him a long, searching glance but she says nothing else.

*

Jaime smiles as he dismounts and walks inside the Red Keep; he smiles as he greets guardsmen and lords and he smiles as he catches the gazes of every woman he passes by and Tywin watches him, thinking he has never before bore such a resemblance to Gerion. The pride of young lions need to be tamed, he had overheard Father say once and back then he had found it a silly notion; he understands it better now.

Jaime still smiles as he sits down with his father in the Tower of the Hand. 

“I have a gift for you,” Tywin says, without preamble. “It's a new sword, fit for a knight. Master Tyr tells me it will be ready tomorrow, before you depart.”

“Thank you, Father.”

The word is that they are riding out again, and his son's glittering eyes tell him that Jaime is looking forward to it, like a boy looks forward to his first tourney. And Jaime is still young. He dreams of the same things he has always dreamed of – battle, bravery, greatness. Tywin thinks of what Genna had said once about him – _that boy would do anything for love, Tywin. Everything._ It's a thought that moves in his mind even now, unsettled and unresolved. He has spelled it out for Jaime over and over: _a high lord will never be loved. A lord with your skill and your name even less so_.

This is what his own father had never understood. Tywin searches for the same sort of leniency in Jaime's eyes, the same kind of hopeless delusions, but he finds only pride and a new sort of experience that seems to swirl in him, not yet settled. What he can hope for – what he must aspire to achieve – is to be no less hated than the other lords and if he is hated, then he must be much more feared. 

In the courts and castles, the inevitable tension demands balance. 

“You will be a man grown within a year, Jaime.” Tywin offers him a cup of red summerwine; Jaime takes it with a half-smile, raking his free hand through his hair. “It is time you return to Casterly Rock. Your uncle Kevan will resume your education there.”

“Already?” 

“You cannot expect to be treated as a boy forever,” he says, pouring a glass of summerwine for himself as well, crossing the floor to stand beside the fireplace. 

Jaime makes a sound of protest, rendering himself at least three years younger. “I'm a _knight._ ” 

“The realm has more knights that it can put to use. What you _are_ is a Lannister.” 

Jaime sits quiet; he's looking into the fire, his eyes burning like gold in the light from it and he is so much his mother's son tonight. _You would be proud of him, too, Joanna,_ he thinks. If she had been born a man, she would have unhorsed all competition at the tourneys and rescued maidens for no other reason than the chance to see their blushing faces, looking adoringly at her. There is no doubt about it in his mind. _I would wear your favour, husband,_ she used to say. It had remained a jape between them – the knight, the maiden, the masks they never managed to fit behind. Their son has her confident gallantry, her vanity, her sharp tongue. And the same stubborn refusal to settle for anything other than what he wants. 

“So that's what I should do?” he asks eventually, his voice is dry and sulking and for a moment he sounds uncannily like his sister whenever she is given an order she is going to attempt to evade. “Go back to Casterly Rock instead of riding with Ser Dayne and the White Cloaks?”

Tywin shakes his head. “You seem to be mistaking this for a proposal, Jaime. It's not. It's your birthright. You were born as the heir of a high lord in the Westerlands, you're not the son of a cheesemonger's.” 

He thinks of his brothers' travels again, of the endless desire to escape that seems to run like a curse in their family, tainting their blood.

“Perhaps a cheesemonger's sons would be free to life as he saw fit,” Jaime mutters so quietly Tywin isn't certain he means for him to hear it. 

“No men are truly free,” he says, regardless. “Only children and fools think elsewise.” 

His son says nothing else, but as he turns his head to put down his wine, the ghost of something seems to cross his face, altering it slightly.

Tywin watches him in silence.

*

Less than a moon's turn later, the room seems hollow around them, an echo of oaths that cannot be forsworn and the clatter of chains forged by Jaime's own hands.

” _Why_?” Tywin demands. 

His son stands motionless before him, his head lowered for a second but then he straightens his back again, ever the truculent little cub.

“Because I asked to join.”

It sounds like a declaration of war, but when their eyes meet, there’s no anger in Jaime's gaze, only a raw sort of disappointment that bares the little boy he still is. _He rushes headlong into everything_ , Joanna had told him once, over supper or as they walked the paths of the Stone Garden. _He doesn't think until afterwards_. Now he's sworn to protect a mad king in a kingdom that slowly prepares itself to go to war and Tywin can't do a single thing to prevent what has already happened, so he turns on his heel and leaves.

 

**  
VI.**

 

“Jon Arryn has raised his banners.”

Kevan speaks the words as though he delivers an invitation to a Spring feast, but Tywin can hear the true meaning in his brother's voice, the heat and weight behind the announcement. 

“We will remain here,” he responds without hesitation. 

Tygett stands in the doorway, too, listening intently. “You intend to bleed out the Starks and the Baratheons before you join?” 

“That is not my main concern,” Tywin says. “But I would welcome it.” 

“And then choose the winning side, brother? Once the battle is done?” There's a streak of reluctant approval in Gerion's voice but Tywin is in no mood for it. He folds his arms across his chest, looking at his brother. 

“Aerys has my son.” The mere thought that Jaime is a glorified hostage at the king's court enrages him to the point of having to clench his teeth, forcing himself to remain calm. “We will not act until we are certain of victory. Jaime should be safe as long as Aerys believes he can gain an advantage through him.” 

Tywin has no intention of putting another Targaryen on the Iron Throne unless it truly cannot be helped and he does not think Prince Rhaegar capable of leading his army to victory. Without Rhaegar, the mad king is nothing. He will remain at the Red Keep, Tywin knows, hiding like a wounded animal – and Tywin still has ears in King's Landing, he will know when the time has come to act. Until then, he explains to his brothers, they are staying in Lannisport, gathering their army. 

Kevan frowns. “It is a hazardous game, Tywin.”

Aerys is nothing without his son and no hostage, no matter how important, can alter that fact. 

“Not if I win,” he says, closing the conversation with an unshakeable confidence he doesn't quite feel.

*

Afterwards, they gather the spoils of war and picks up the pieces of Seven Kingdom's worth of broken alliances and betrayed promises. Tywin stands with his son in an empty corridor in the Red Keep, feeling the lack of sleep as a low hum in his body, the hollowness of war spreading around them.

“Rhaegar's children.” Jaime doesn't look at him; he doesn't look up, as though he is afraid to catch a glimpse of his own reflection. 

Kevan had been the only one there when Tywin received the bodies of the dead children, presented to them as gifts wrapped in the finest of silks. In his memory, they had looked at the corpses without saying a word. They are maimed, not killed, Tywin remembers thinking. He had not given orders to torture them and the sight had been revolting and still is, but he had said nothing about that, not in that room. Those are questions for peace; war is war and always the same. He had merely nodded at Clegane and Lorch, sending them away. _The Princess of Dorne was Joanna's dearest friend_ , he had said to Kevan without knowing why; the words had found their way out of him. _I know_ , Kevan had replied and then neither of them spoke more of the matter because there was nothing else to say. 

There still isn't. They are dead because Robert Baratheon went to war for the Iron Throne but did not want his own hands bloodied; they are dead because Tywin had counted on just that. 

He is a man of few regrets. Regret is a wasteful sort of sentiment, a twisted shape in a man's mind and it does not serve a purpose save for meaningless self-flagellation. It is one thing to wish for the possibility to make a different choice – he has wished for that a number of times and some of them very recently – but quite another to be foolish enough to wish the deeds away. Boys have dreams of war, men must tend to reality. 

It is a weakness in a man not to be able to endure the weight of what he has done. 

When he tells his son this, the only response is a sound that gets stuck between a scoff and a curse, heavy in the air between them. 

“He was going to burn down King's Landing,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Burn them all. That's what he told them.”

Tywin is silent for a moment. 

“You had good reason,” he says eventually. “It was a foolish, damnable thing, of course, but undeniably brave all the same. 

“Is that _approval_?” The edge of bitterness in his son's voice is a sharp, double-edged sword. 

“Yes.” Tywin observes him. He waits for him to say something derisive or clever as he is prone to do, but he stays silent as though he, too, is waiting. “There is no need for you to sound so surprised.”

Jaime gives a humourless laugh. “So I was right to kill the mad king but you wish I had done it differently?”

“I wish you had done a lot of things differently, Jaime, but that is beside the point.” 

He shakes his head, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand as though he wants to rub something off. “What happens now?” 

“You will receive a pardon from the new king on the Iron Throne.” Tywin puts a hand on his son's shoulder, squeezing it. “I gave him a throne; he will release you from your oath. And then you will go back to Casterly Rock and be the man you were meant to be.”

It sounds so simple in that moment, so _clear_.


	4. Chapter 4

**PART FOUR  
**

 

**I**

She will never be able to step down now, Tywin thinks as he watches Cersei climb the throne to be seated besides King Robert Baratheon. Around them, the great hall explode with earth-shattering exultation.

“Long live the King! Long live his Queen!” 

And the young man on the Iron Throne is a triumphant king now – if ill at ease in the crowd – but he might not always be. And if he falls, if he dies, he will leave Cersei alone in a kingdom that's ripe for conquest and she must fight to keep the throne just as Robert had done; she must fight until there is no one of her future sons left to put on the throne, until the last of her kin is defeated. 

Robert is a strong man with a weak claim, Kevan had said as the negotiations with Lord Arryn begun. Uncertain kingdoms demand claimant kings and queens. 

So now, Tywin thinks, now while the king is still welcome everywhere and forgiven everything, they must build their own throne beneath him. 

He looks at Jaime who stands with the rest of the Kingsguard; his face is stern and as pale as his cloak, as stubborn as his refusal to be released from the vows sworn to a madman – Tywin had convinced King Robert to relieve Jaime of service but Jaime had refused, claiming he wanted to remain at court, serving his king. A fool's decision, but he has time to change his mind yet. And he _will_ , Tywin knows. 

Once, when they were stretched out in bed with Joanna curled into him and his arms were wrapped around her, she had asked what he imagined would become of their children. _Our beautiful little terrors_ , she had said, in that tone that had been equal parts exasperation and gentleness. _What will they be like?_ Tywin had suggested that his son would be a knight and his daughter would become a queen and Joanna had smiled, knitted her eyebrows. _You're as romantic as a bard, dear husband. Who would have thought?_

Tywin pushes the thoughts of her away as he meets the gaze of their daughter. 

“Is she a queen now?” Tyrion asks, a boy of nearly ten now, though no taller than a small child. He sounds bored already. 

“Yes,” Tywin says, without taking his eyes off the ceremony. “Your sister is the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms now.”

 

 

**  
II.**

 

When Tyrion is a small child, he seems to forget Tywin whenever he stays away for too long.

He returns to Casterly Rock to find his servants greeting him and his son fleeing to one of his many hiding places, remaining there until someone with enough patience coxes him out of it. At first he thinks it's a child's game. Jaime and Cersei would play hide-and-seek, too, take cover behind furniture and spring up on him when they thought he would not expect it, their giggles and squeals leaving a loud trace behind them as they attacked. Usually Joanna, but even Tywin would fall prey to their pranks when they had got used to him again after his absences.

But the dwarf never jumps out of hiding place, he merely remains hidden. When he is still plying his way towards language and seems to constantly make _noise_ , he stays silent in Tywin's presence; when he grows older, words sprouting out of him more easily than they ever did for his other children, there's a reserve in him whenever he shares a room with his father, a temperance he otherwise doesn't show.

From his bedchamber and its balcony Tywin sometimes watches the boy play. With Jaime before he leaves for Crakehall, with Gerion when he deigns to honour them with his presence at, with his cousins if they are visiting; he basks in their attention, craving their admiration for whatever foolish trick he has up his sleeve. _A prideful little lion_ , Genna says in his head but when Tywin asks her what pride there is in cartwheeling across the dinner table, she cannot answer.

He is merely _insatiable_ , Tywin thinks. It's as though he already knows he will have nothing.

No lord will give his daughter to an imp, no army will be led by a man with a child's strength, no legacies can be forged by cursed blood and the knowledge spreads in him, dark and resentful, making a mockery of everything in these halls. 

“So send him to the Citadel then.” Kevan suggests. “The boy is clever, Tywin.”

*

For his twelfth nameday, the boy wants a ship of his own.

Gerion chuckles at the suggestion and tries for several days to convince Tywin to give him one.

“Oh come now, brother. What harm will it do?”

“He is not a pirate, he's a lion.” _At least half a lion._

At Tyrion's age, Tywin recalls, Jaime had been presented with his first armour - a handsome work, befitting a young lord and embellished with the Lannister crest - as well as a longsword to replace the wooden ones. His eyes had been wide open as he struggled to maintain the dignified calm of a twelve year old boy holding his first proper blade in his hands but mere moments after Tywin had left the room, he had heard his son all but stumble his way into the armour to try it on.

Tywin has a similar suit of armour made, several years later and several sizes smaller.

Tyrion says nothing as he looks at the gifts; he struggles to even lift the plate from the table and his gaze darkens as he looks at the sword that is created to fit his build. Small enough for a suckling babe, one of the guardsmen had whispered, Tywin had ignored the jape. 

“Your brother has a sword like that,” he says, pointedly. “He can teach you how to use it, I am certain.”

“Thank you, Father.” Tyrion's voice is devoid of all emotions; he has the sword and the armour carried to the spot in their armoury that has been reserved for the youngest son of Casterly Rock ever since Gerion created one for him. Placed there, beside each other, they resemble small mountains of silver and gold. 

When Tywin returns to the castle again after a long stop at King's Landing, he finds them in the exact same spot, untouched.

 

 

**  
III.**

“I know you care about all of your children, even if you’re an unregenerate fool.” 

Genna stands in front of his desk, hands on hips and a deeply worried expression on her face. It blends with the anger in her voice, clashes against his own icy fury. 

“The boy needs to be taught a lesson,” he says with a calmness he does not feel. 

He has offered that wretched boy to every respectable lord in the Seven Kingdoms - he has deliberately suggested the youngest daughters, the widows, the still unwed ones who no longer can hope for a better match - and they have all turned him down. The singers will sing songs of this for centuries, he thinks. The Lannister imp, spitting on his heritage and dragging whores into the castle. Just like Lord Tytos. It has taken Tywin his whole life to wash the stains of his father's sins away; he is not going to let a commoner's daughter and a stunted fool of a son dishonour their name. 

“One of these days someone is going to teach _you_ a lesson, if you keep at this.” Genna is as unshakeable as the Rock itself. “You are too cruel, Tywin.”

“Thank you for your invaluable and astute advice.”

They both look at each other for a moment, then Genna looks away. “You will _not_ hang the girl.”

“You are hardly the judge of that.”

“I won't allow it.” She shakes her head. “If Joanna was alive-“

“She _isn’t._ ” 

If Tywin could have bargained for her life, he would have done so thirteen years ago. He would do it still, Seven help him. When he tells his sister this she merely scoffs, but it's a moaning sound, as though his words wound her. 

“He's a young man, a _boy_. You do remember faintly what it was like, don’t you? Being young?”

He does. He remembers training with their master-at-arms every day, he remembers maps and books and swords and duty, duty, duty. 

“I did not wed whores in a drunken folly,” he says coolly. 

“No,” Genna agrees, soft-spoken now. “You were brilliant and fierce and adored by our remarkable cousin. Who can your son hope to be adored by?”

_Anyone he pays handsomely enough._

“The gods made him an imp, they did not force him to be a useless fool. I will not pity him.”

“No, of course not.” Genna's eyes are dark, almost endlessly so, like a force has been released in her. “The great Lord Tywin does not pity anyone. Perhaps you ought to start, dear brother. You could start by pitying yourself, for having become such a remorseless creature that Joanna would cry if she could see you-”

“ _Enough!_ ” He slams his fist down on the table, and before he has even blinked, his sister has slammed her own fist down too, with equal force. Between them, ink and wine flow out over the old map Gerion had found recently.

“Yes.” Genna's voice is cold. “I believe I have had enough of you for today.”

When she has left, he watches the stains being soaked up by the old parchment, crumpling it up in the process. 

He shakes his head and leans forward in his chair, sighing.

*

In the end, the girl he doesn't hang looks up at him from the floor with empty eyes that reminds him of soldiers in battle. His orders had been to treat her like they would any whore and pay her handsomely for it; he had not watched. 

While two of his men escort Tyrion out, the girl remains on the floor, and he wonders why until it dawns on him that she's waiting for him to go last. A twist of disgust deep in his stomach causes him to purse his lips at the mere thought. _When did it come to this?_

“My lord, I-”

Holding up a hand to silence her, he turns to one of the guards. “See that she gets out of here.”

She scrambles up from the floor, shaking and fumbling with her tattered clothes and the coins that spill out of her hands, and roll between her legs and feet. It's a pathetic sight, relentless and heavy at the back of his mind, so he turns away from it.

*

“You did not tell me you intended to give her to the guards, Father.” Jaime squares his shoulders, pauses briefly in his pacing to give Tywin a disgusted look. “You never said you were going to have her _raped._ ”

He can still hear Genna in his head, her voice breaking through the stale air of this room. _Tyrion is more like you than you will ever admit. Jaime is Joanna's son._ But Joanna would have understood. Joanna would know that if you cannot have respect, you need to invoke fear. She would know, too, that this is how the world _is_. Then Jaime stops in front of him, very close, raking a hand through his hair and making a sound that sounds like a sob, and Tywin can feel his firm conviction slip away. 

“Would it have changed your mind?” he asks evenly, already knowing the answer. 

“Yes!” 

“It shouldn't have.“ 

For a moment, Jaime looks as though he is about to hit him. His face is distorted with shades of guilt and anger and disgust; then he gathers himself, resembling his mother more than ever as he walks out of the room without saying another word, without hearing as Tywin calls his name. 

 

 

 

**  
Epilogue  
**

 

The flames are blazing nicely in the fireplace and the wine in his cup is richly flavoured with just the right touch of sweetness. It is not quite sufficient to distract him from the assorted troubles in King's Landing, but it's doing its best. He never drinks much, not even today, but he makes an exception for his brother's offerings. 

“Do you remember what Father used to say about this place?” Kevan stretches out in his chair, looking down at the cup in his hand. 

Lord Tytos had hated the politics of court, that was no secret in the Seven Kingdoms and certainly not to his children who often had listened to their father's complaints as he returned or as he was about to depart. 

Tywin has no taste for nostalgia but he nods; he remembers. It has been a tumultuous new year where things have begun to slip out of his hands. For the first time in his life he feels _old,_ lacking the young man's unbroken steel, the fire he had spotted in Jaime's eyes as he hotly declared his intentions to keep hiding behind the white cloak, wasting the rest of his life as well. Even in the spiteful idiocy of Tyrion's behaviour at the trial, in his refusal to employ a single scrap of sense, there had been the passion of a lion. 

He takes a large swallow of the wine. It hits his stomach and glows there briefly before the coldness of his body extinguishes it again. 

“Jaime will come to his senses soon enough,” Kevan says, as always in tune with Tywin's thoughts.

“He is as stubborn as Joanna. When did she ever change her mind?”

His brother smiles. “I can recall a few occasions when you wore her down.” 

The difference, Tywin knows, is that Joanna had trusted him. Always. Without explanations, without fear, she had looked into his eyes and nodded. She is the only person who has ever looked at him that way. And he has missed her every day for more than twenty years and yet, he thinks with a stitch of anger, he is almost grateful she is not here to witness the things he has seen recently. She has not seen her grandson murdered or her son stand accused of the deed, she has not seen her firstborn son - her beloved, _golden_ child – maimed and tormented by his own misdoings. She has not heard the whispers in the walls here, or understood the reason for the vile accusations all too well. 

“We will put Tommen on the throne,” Tywin says, without a trace of uncertainty. “And we wed him to Margaery Tyrell. It will make little difference to Highgarden and Tommen will likely be better for the realm.”

Kevan nods. “Yes.”

And then they will make certain Cersei is wed again as well, giving her enough of an occupation to leave the education of her son in the hands of capable men at court. 

“I still intend for Tyrion to take the black.” He takes another sip of wine. 

He had fought a long and relentless battle for that deal, he is not about to let it go because his son is a stubborn fool. I am not a kinslayer, he had told Cersei, who had not listened any more to that than she had listened to him when he told her she ought to restrain her grief. _Am I not allowed to weep for my own son, Father?_ She had been furious, of course, behind her tears. _Would you not weep for Jaime if he died? For me?_

Not where I could be seen, Tywin had thought, wondering if even that is true. The years, they say, either harden or soften a man. The years he has lived through have arranged themselves around him, a bone-hard suit of armour. He feels so little these days and it's an advantage he knows how to employ. 

_We are old, brother,_ he thinks as he looks at Kevan again. _But who will take over after us?_

“Winter most certainly is upon us,” Kevan says, bringing him out of his thoughts. He inches his chair a little bit closer to the fireplace. He has lost much over the past few years, Tywin thinks. War has demanded great prices from everyone, but he has been successful and he will put an end to the continuing fighting as well, given time. 

War is not too costly if they win. 

Once they were boys, no older than his grandson. Boys climbing in the Stone Garden, playing war games among ancient maps and portraits of all those men who lived before them. Kevan who was King Mern of the Reach and Tywin who had been a King Loren reluctant to surrender his Rock to the dragons because he had never understood why anyone would bow his head. 

Once they were boys, restless and wakeful in the Stone Garden where the ancient scraps of legend and myth crawled into their blood and dreams. 

Tywin thinks of their own sons, thinks of Tyrion in his cell, Lancel on his knees in the sept, Jaime wrapped in white, always at a distance. 

He thinks of their own sons; he sits with his brother until the flames burn down.


End file.
